Harold H. “Hank” Gardner (EXP ’59) has come full circle, both as a resident of Wyoming and in his thinking about health care. During that journey, his accomplishments have made him one of the top names in his field, representing the University of Wyoming and his native state.
Gardner was raised in Afton, Wyo., one of eight children born to parents who were both educators. “Wyoming is in my blood,” he says, and UW, too, as seven siblings from the family are UW alumni. He attended UW on both athletic and academic scholarships. As a college basketball player, he learned that “playing Division-1 sports is a full-time job.” Combined with his rigorous pre-med coursework, he was grateful for mentoring by key faculty members. Gardner did not graduate from UW because, at that time, students commonly went early into medical schools. After three years, he went to the University of Rochester School of Medicine.
What happened after the first year of internship following medical school, he describes as an “important bump in the road.” “I was drafted into the Army in the middle of the Vietnam War,” he says. “I spent a very long year there as a general medical officer.” Gardner says until that time he had been doing a conventional academic medical career. He came back from military service “more interested in a broader range of social and economic issues.”
Gardner has worked toward solving those problems, practicing medicine with a focus on disease prevention. He has held academic appointments at the University of Rochester, Wayne State University and the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City and is currently an adjunct professor in the University of Wyoming Colleges of Business and Health Sciences. Gardner was a pioneer in the HMO and managed care movement and in the development of multidisciplinary primary care health professional roles. “Much of the problem with physician training is that it takes place in fine hospitals rather than in primary or personal care settings,” he says.
Gardner pioneered the concept of health as human capital for employers and government that emphasizes the importance of person-centric integrated information and an understanding of economic incentives in the management of employee health and health benefits.
After working in places including Detroit and New York, he decided to return to Wyoming. He is the founder, owner and operator of Human Capital Management Services Inc., a research and consulting service business based in Cheyenne, Wyo., and is also chairman of the Health as Human Capital Foundation.
Wyoming has a more favorable business environment, Gardner says, plus he’s able to put his relationship with UW to good use. “Half of my recruits have UW degrees.”
