Commissioner Brooke Cunningham

Dr. Brooke Cunningham was appointed Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) in January 2023. In this role, she leads the state’s principal public health agency, guiding efforts to protect, maintain, and improve the health of all Minnesotans. MDH employs nearly 2,000 staff across the Twin Cities and throughout Greater Minnesota working to advance public health through science, policymaking, programs, and partnership.

Professional background

As Commissioner, Dr. Cunningham has led efforts to strengthen Minnesota's public health system, advance health equity, modernize public health infrastructure, and deepen partnerships with communities across the state. Her leadership has focused on ensuring that all Minnesotans have the opportunity to achieve their best possible health, while positioning the department to address emerging public health challenges, improve data and technology systems, and support a strong public health workforce. To advance sustainable improvements in population health, under her leadership as commissioner, several key new offices and divisions and leadership roles were created, including the Office of African American Health, the Division of Injury Prevention and Mental Health, and the Chief Data and Analytics Officer position. Dr. Cunningham has also focused on strengthening internal processes, promoted “One MDH” as the agency’s organizational north star, and championed collaboration across government, health care, community organizations, and Tribal Nations to improve agency effectiveness and better serve Minnesotans.

Prior to her role as commissioner, Dr. Cunningham was appointed as the assistant commissioner for the Health Equity Bureau when that bureau was first established in 2022 by Commissioner Jan Malcolm. As assistant commissioner, Cunningham was responsible for overseeing the Center for Health Equity, the Office of American Indian Health, the COVID-19 Health Equity Team, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Dr. Cunningham was previously an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota Medical School. As faculty, she received the University of Minnesota’s Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Award for her research and teaching, which sought to improve the knowledge, motivation, and skill of faculty and physician-trainees to address racism as a health risk factor. She also provided primary care at the Community University Health Care Center, a federally qualified health care center that serves a diverse underserved patient population in Minneapolis.

Dr. Cunningham currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) and is an alumnus of the nationally recognized Milbank Memorial Fund Fellows Program.

Educational background

Dr. Cunningham is trained as a general internist and sociologist. She earned her M.D. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and completed her internal medicine residency at Duke University. She also completed several prestigious fellowships, including the Greenwall Fellowship in Bioethics and Health Policy, a general internal medicine fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, and the Academy Health Delivery System Science Fellowship at the Medica Research Institute. Dr. Cunningham holds a bachelor’s degree in history and African American studies from the University of Virginia.