Ron Z. Goetzel wears two hats. He is both the founding Director of the Cornell University Institute for Health and Productivity Studies and Vice President of Consulting and Applied Research at Thomson Medstat. 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. At both Cornell and Medstat, 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, return-on-investment (ROI), data analysis, 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 for Medicare’s Senior Risk Reduction Demonstration (SRRD) and New Opportunities for Healthy Aging in Medicare (NOHAM) project. He is also principal investigator for a project sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) focused on obesity prevention and management at the Dow Chemical Company. For the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Goetzel is the principal investigator for a New York City-based project supporting collaborative efforts between the private and public sectors in health promotion and disease prevention programs directed at employers. He is also leading a Health and Productivity Management (HPM) benchmarking and employer “tools” project for the CDC. He has functioned as principal investigator for research efforts directed at employer HPM initiatives at Applied Materials, Boeing, ChevronTexaco, Pacific Bell, Citibank, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Florida Power & Light, Duke University, Sharp Health Care, Saturn Corporation, PG&E, The Associates and HERO. He has also been a principal on several health and disease management evaluation projects for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association Federal Employee Program (FEP), General Electric Company, Ford, PSE&G, Motorola, Delta Airlines, Lucent, International Truck and Engine, First Tennessee Bank and Texas Instruments. His pharmaceutical industry work with Aventis, Schering-Plough, Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Eli Lilly has focused on establishing the health and productivity cost burden of certain illnesses.

Before joining Medstat in 1995, Dr. Goetzel was Vice President of Assessment, Data Analysis and Evaluation Services at Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems. Before joining Johnson & Johnson, 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.