The National Academy of Medicine has announced the appointment of J. Michael McGinnis as the new Leonard D. Schaeffer Executive Officer. In this role, Dr. McGinnis will serve as the chief operating officer and will be responsible for managing NAM’s programs and guiding its operation on a daily basis.
Dr. McGinnis currently serves as Senior Scholar and Executive Director of the NAM Leadership Consortium (formerly the Institute of Medicine [IOM] Roundtable) for Value & Science-Driven Health Care, which he has headed for 10 years. Under his tenure, the Consortium has launched and stewarded the nationally recognized Learning Health System Initiative, a program of collaborative action and publications dedicated to aligning science, informatics, incentives, and culture for continuous improvement and innovation in health. Its work is conducted through five national Innovation Collaboratives, which provide a trusted venue for information sharing and cooperation among stakeholder organizations with common interests.
Prior to his work at the Academies, Dr. McGinnis was Senior Vice President at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where he founded and directed RWJF’s Health Group. From 1977 to 1995, Dr. McGinnis served as Assistant Surgeon General, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health, and Founding Director of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. McGinnis also served after signing of the Dayton Accords as Chair of the World Bank/European Commission Sectoral Task Force on Health and Human Services Reconstruction in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Earlier in his career he served as state coordinator for the World Health Organization’s successful program to eradicate smallpox in India. Dr. McGinnis is the author of more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, has been editor-in-chief for more than two dozen volumes on public health policy, and has chaired 16 national-level committees on various aspects of health policy and science. He is an elected member of the NAM.
