About Klaus
Klaus Krøyer Madsen, MPH is an independent population health consultant.
Since 2014, he has led Cities for Better Health (formerly Cities Changing Diabetes) at the community level in Houston, the third city to join the global network of cities responding to the urban diabetes epidemic. From 2018 to 2022, Klaus replicated the Houston model in Philadelphia. He formed a strong stakeholder coalition and engaged over 600 stakeholders in an innovation challenge that resulted in a solid project portfolio currently being implemented.
Klaus’ approach to collaborative innovation design has been highlighted by several organizations, including Novo Nordisk and the World Economic Forum.
In addition to Cities for Better Health, Klaus is advising the Institute for Spirituality and Health at the Texas Medical Center on coalition building and public private partnerships.
Klaus and his team are currently developing a chronic disease prevention strategy for a major health philanthropy in Texas.
During Covid, he led a large scale vaccine outreach and education program for the Houston Health Department, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most recently, he served served as a consultant on social determinants of health to Novo Nordisk in the US, and globally on two recent innovation challenges in chronic disease prevention and community health that attracted almost 200 entries from around the world. Klaus coached over 20 projects from Brazil, Cambodia, Germany, Ghana, Mexico, Mozambique, Portugal, and the United States.
Klaus served as the primary consultant to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded Healthy Cities Research Hub at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. The Healthy Cities Research Hub focused on extracting and translating the findings from the Cities Changing Diabetes initiatives in North America (Mexico City, Houston, and Vancouver) and sharing the results to help other cities advance into action.
Prior to starting his own consulting firm, Klaus worked fifteen years at Texas Health Institute, where he built the organization’s chronic disease portfolio and served as Vice President for Programs. He has developed new solutions to address health equity in many communities across Texas, including families of incarcerated individuals at Dallas County Jail, underserved rural residents of Jasper and Newton Counties, immigrants in Amarillo, and families affected by childhood obesity in Corpus Christi.
Central to Klaus’ success in stakeholder engagement has been his ability to create multi-sector partnerships and coalitions. He co-founded the Partnership for a Healthy Texas, a statewide obesity policy coalition now in its 18th year, and designed and implemented the coalition architecture for Cities for Better Health in Houston and Philadelphia with a particular focus on the voices of people living with chronic diseases from underserved communities.
In addition to serving on the Steering Committee of Partnership for a Healthy Texas, Klaus volunteers on the board of BikeTexas.
Klaus received his Bachelor of Science in Business, Language, and Culture from Copenhagen Business School. He was an exchange student in the MBA program at The University of Texas at Austin. He received his Master of Public Health degree in Health Policy and Management from the National Executive Masters program at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health.