As Commissioner of the Minneapolis Health Department since 2005, Gretchen Musicant oversees and manages the Department’s mission of improving the quality of life for all people in the city by protecting the environment, preventing disease and injury, promoting healthy behaviors, and creating a city that is a healthy place to live, work and play. Before her appointment to Commisioner, Gretchen served as the Minneapolis Health Department’s director of public health initiatives, a role in which she demonstrated her ability to form lasting connections with community groups and organizations.
With innovative leadership skills, Gretchen played a vital role in the success and strategic direction of several programs including school-based clinic programs, Healthy Start, the New Families Centers and the TANF visiting program, all of which continue to help reduce infant mortality, provide immunization and insurance to new public school students, and improve youth development and family well-being in Minneapolis. One of the key features of Gretchen’s leadership is her reliance on partnerships to bring about change. She devotes considerable time and resources to making connections, developing partnerships across agencies and within communities.
Prior to working for the City, Gretchen honed substantial public policy experience serving as vice president of community health for the Minnesota Hospital Association and a government affairs specialist for the Minnesota Nurses Association.
As a former president of the SPH Alumni Society, Gretchen sits on the School’s public health administration and policy program advisory board and recently chaired the Metro Local Public Health Association. She received the 2007 Paul and Sheila Wellstone Public health Achievement Award from the Minnesota Public Health Association and was designated one of 100 Distinguished Nursing Alumni from the School of Nursing, where she earned her bachelors of science.
About the Award: The Gaylord W. Anderson Leadership Award is bestowed upon a graduate of the School of Public Health who embodies Anderson’s qualities as a visionary leader, teacher, collaborator and public health ambassador, and possesses an abundance of intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, and the ability to inspire others. Recipients of the Leadership Award must have:
- demonstrated leadership and forward thinking, and advanced public health goals, initiatives and outcomes;
- served as an exemplary model or mentor in his/her role as an educator, researcher, administrator, practitioner or advocate in public health; and
- exhibited creativity and innovation in building partnerships, multidisciplinary teams or service structures to bring about change.