Ron Z. Goetzel, Ph.D. Research Professor and Director Emory University, Institute for Health and Productivity Studies Vice President of Consulting and Applied Research Thomson Reuters

Ron Z. Goetzel wears two hats.  He is both the Director of the Emory University Institute for Health and Productivity Studies and Vice President of Consulting and Applied Research for Thomson Reuters.  The mission of the IHPS is to bridge the gap between academia, the business community, and the healthcare policy world – bringing academic resources into policy debates and day-to-day business decisions, and bringing health and productivity management issues into academia.  Before moving to Emory, Dr. Goetzel was at Cornell University.  Dr. Goetzel is responsible for leading innovative research projects and consulting services for healthcare purchaser, managed care, government, and pharmaceutical clients interested in conducting cutting-edge research focused on the relationship between health and well-being, and work-related productivity.  He is a nationally recognized and widely published expert in health and productivity management (HPM), return-on-investment (ROI), program evaluation and outcomes research.

Over the past 20 years, Dr. Goetzel’s work has focused on large-scale evaluations of health promotion, disease prevention, demand and disease management programs.  He is principal investigator (PI) for Medicare’s Senior Risk Reduction Demonstration (SRRD) and New Opportunities for Healthy Aging in Medicare (NOHAM) project.  He is also PI for a project sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) focused on obesity prevention and management at the worksite.  For the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Goetzel is the PI for a New York City based project supporting collaboration between the private and public sectors in health promotion and disease prevention initiatives directed at employers.  As PI for a study funded by the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors (NACCD), Dr. Goetzel identified the characteristics of promising practices in workplace health and productivity management (HPM) programs.  For the CDC, Dr. Goetzel was the PI for a Landscape Assessment of Worker Health Promotion and Protection Efforts.  He has been involved in evaluations of health promotion and disease prevention, demand and disease management evaluations for Applied Materials, Boeing, Chevron, Dow Chemical, Pacific Bell, Citibank, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Florida Power & Light, Duke University, General Electric Company, Ford, PSE&G, Motorola, Delta Airlines, Lucent, International Truck and Engine, First Tennessee Bank, Texas Instruments, Sharp Health Care, Saturn Corporation, PG&E, The Associates, Novartis, King County, Blue Cross Blue Shield Federal Employee Program (FEP), Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, and Highmark.  His pharmaceutical industry research with Aventis, Bristol Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Schering-Plough, Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Eli Lilly has focused on establishing the health and productivity cost burden of certain illnesses.  

Before joining Thomson Reuters (formerly Medstat) in 1995, Dr. Goetzel was Vice President of Assessment, Data Analysis and Evaluation Services at Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems.  Dr. Goetzel was one of the original members of the core development and marketing group at Corporate Health Strategies, currently a division of Ingenix.  Earlier in his career, Dr. Goetzel was the Medical School Education Program Evaluator at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he was appointed to the Psychiatry faculty.

Dr. Goetzel earned his doctorate in Organizational and Administrative Studies and his M.A. in Applied Social Psychology from New York University (NYU), and his B.S. degree in Psychology from the City College of New York (CCNY).  He is located in Washington, DC.