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Gregory A. Plotnikoff, MD, MTS, FACP is an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota Academic Health Center. There he co-established the Center for Spirituality and Healing and served as its first medical director from 1997-2002. Since 2002, he has been on a leave of absence, first as a visiting associate professor, and now as an Invited Associate Professor, at Keio University Medical School in Tokyo, Japan.
While in Japan, Greg has been active in establishing coursework in bioethics and professionalism. He introduced the White Coat Ceremony to highlight the transition from classroom to hospital training. Additionally, he fostered the development of Japan’s first student-prepared oath for this ceremony. His research has focused on East-West issues in ethical reasoning. While in Japan, Greg has been active in publishing and speaking in Japanese on topics in cross-cultural and integrative medicine.
At Carleton College, Greg pursued an interdisciplinary concentration in Science, Technology and Public Policy. His teachers included Paul Wellstone, Norman Vig, Mike Casper and Ian Barbour. Greg postponed medical school in order to attend Harvard Divinity School. There he studied spirituality with Henri Nouwen, world cultures and religions with Diana Eck, political philosophy with John Rawls as well as ethics with both Roderick Firth and Arthur Dyck. While at Harvard, Greg graduated from the Youville Hospital Chaplaincy Training Program. During medical school, Greg was active in the AMSA Standing Committee on Bioethics and, with scholarship support from the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation, he attended Georgetown University 's Intensive Bioethics Program. After medical school, Greg trained in the combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics residency program at the University of Minnesota.
For 9 years after residency, Greg served as a primary care physician at the Community-University Health Care Center, an inner-city clinic where at least 14 different languages are spoken. From this experience, Greg has sought to advance the research base for understanding the intersection of cultures, faith and natural products in clinical care. Greg has published on topics relevant to his clinical practice at this clinic including: ethical challenges in cross-cultural care; spirituality in clinical care; Hmong shamanism; low-cost, low-toxicity, non-pharmaceutical therapies as well as vitamin D deficiency. Greg has been active at the University of Minnesota with medical school curricular innovations in bioethics, professionalism, spirituality, cross-cultural care and integrative medicine.
Greg has been the recipient of numerous awards including the University of Minnesota Medical School Medical Alumni Society's Early Career Distinguished Achievement Award (2004), CHIP Distinguished Alumni Award (2000), Sir John Templeton Spirituality and Medicine Curricular Award (1999) and the "In the Spirit of Carleton" Early Career Achievement Award (1998). He has been named a fellow by the American College of Physicians and the United States-Japan Foundation Leadership Program.