Dr Isham is Chief Health Office and Plan Medical Director for Health Partners.

In his role as Chief Health Officer, Dr. Isham is responsible for health promotion and disease prevention, research, and health professionals’ education. He is also responsible for the health dimension of HealthPartners’ strategic plan and is active in state and national health policy issues. As plan Medical Director, he is responsible for quality and utilization management for HealthPartners Health Plan. He is a founding board member of the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement, a collaborative of Twin Cities medical groups and health plans that is implementing clinical practice guidelines in Minnesota. Dr. Isham is currently a co-chair of a State of Minnesota Health Care Reform Task Force that is working on defining episodes of care. Dr. Isham provides leadership to other care delivery systems through service on the board of directors for Presbyterian Health Services in Albuquerque, NM and the External Advisory board of the Marshfield Clinic in Marshfield, WI.

Dr. Isham is active nationally as a member of the board of directors of the American’s Health Insurance Plans, the Alliance of Community Health Plans, the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Care, and Bridges to Excellence. He is past co-chair and current member of the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s (NCQA) Committee on Performance Measurement which oversees the Health Plan quality measurement standards and currently chairs the NCQA’s committee on Physician Recognition Programs. He is a member of the National Priority Partners effort convened by the National Quality Forum, chairing the population health workgroup of that effort. He has served on the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Task Force on Community Preventive Services, on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) Advisory Board for the National Guideline Clearinghouse and currently is a member of the US Task Force on Clinical Preventive Services. He currently serves on the advisory board for the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review at Harvard.

Dr. Isham has served on the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice and chaired the IOM committees that authored the reports Priority Areas for National Action, Transforming Health Care Quality and The State of the USA Health Indicators. Dr. Isham currently chairs the IOM Roundtable on Health Literacy. He was invited to present the Institute of Medicine’s Rosenthal Lecture for 2005 on “Next Steps Toward Higher Quality Health Care.” In addition, he has served on a number of committees, has presented to a number of workshops, and served as a reviewer of reports and workshop proceedings. In 2003 Dr. Isham was appointed as a lifetime National Associate of the National Academies of Science in recognition of his contributions to the work of the Institute of Medicine.