Dr. Julie Anne Jacko is Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Population Health Science in the NSU Kiran C. Patel College of Allopathic Medicine; and Professor in the NSU H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship. She is a leader, innovator, scholar, and entrepreneur, creating and applying engineering-derived solutions to high-impact domains such as population health, health IT, and manufacturing of devices and systems that improve human health.
Dr. Jacko has a career lifetime total exceeding $29 million in externally funded research as either PI or Co-PI. She has over 13,800 total citations; 4,903 since 2015. With an h-index of 52 overall, her 180 publications have appeared in preeminent scientific journals, including Nature, Gynecologic Oncology, Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, and Retina. She was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor awarded to young research investigators by the U.S. government. Numerous awards since have positioned her at the forefront of her field.
Dr. Jacko's expertise extends to educational and programmatic leadership as well. Passionately committed to addressing historic health inequities for communities of color, marginalized populations, and low-resourced communities, Dr. Jacko is the Principal Investigator and Project Director on a four-year grant awarded in 2021 by the Florida Blue Foundation to prevent opioid and substance abuse in ethnic and gender/sexual minority youth in South Florida. Under her leadership, the Department of Population Health at NSU MD, together with its numerous youth-serving community health partners, has formed the South Florida Community Coalition for Opioid and Substance Abuse in South Florida Youth (SFCC), delivering educational interventions and evidence-based programming to vulnerable youth in the region.
Moreover, as the Founding Director of the Institute for Health Informatics at the University of Minnesota (UMN), Dr. Jacko led a new model of interdisciplinary collaboration that culminated in, among other achievements, the receipt of a $5.15 million award from the ONC to create the University Partnership for Health Informatics, the first public-private institutional partnership in the Upper Midwest delivering multiple graduate degree programs in the field of health informatics.
An expert consultant in the manufacturing, healthcare, and IT sectors, Dr. Jacko often serves as a strategist for organizations seeking to improve productivity, profitability, and impact. She has an innate passion for entrepreneurial endeavors. In 2015, she was recognized as a top entrepreneur in Miami, Florida for having created “one of the city’s most prolific businesses.”