Stephen McDonough, M.D.

Dr. Stephen McDonough, a member of the President's Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition, has worked for 30 years as a pediatrician in North Dakota. Dr. McDonough spent more than fifteen years in senior positions at the North Dakota Department of Health. During his time at the Department of Health, Dr. McDonough led efforts to prevent smoking and combat childhood obesity in North Dakota. A longtime faculty member at the University of North Dakota Medical School, he has also published articles in the New England Journal of Medicine and Pediatrics, authored a book on the history of public health in North Dakota, and worked for more than a decade with Boy Scouts of America. Dr. McDonough graduated from the University of Minnesota Medical School and completed his pediatric residency at the University of Colorado in Denver.

Dr. McDonough was concerned about childhood obesity in 1984 when he established a community program in Grand Forks, North Dakota. In 1989, he coordinated the North Dakota Centennial Run involving over 700 runners and covering 1400 miles during 19 days in May. He finished the Bismarck Marathon in 1993 and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in 2007. He hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, Peru in 2010 and completed a mountaineering course on Winthrop Glacier, Mt. Rainier in 2011. He has participated in 3 high adventure Boy Scout adventures involving canoeing in the Minnesota Boundary Waters, Ontario Quetico Provencial Park and Yellowstone National Park.

Dr. McDonough has lectured at the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control. He served on the North Dakota Council on Physical Fitness in the 1980s and 1990s. He played a leading role in the development and implementation of North Dakota Health Department state plans to address tobacco use, HIV/AIDS, cancer, and adolescent suicide. He was named North Dakota public health worker of the year in 1987 and received a Star Quilt in 1991 for his efforts with Native American cancer prevention and control from his work with the Three-Affiliated Tribes.

He completed the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award (PALA) on November 1, 2010 and the Presidential Champions Gold Award on June 12, 2011. During the summer of 2011, he was asked by Boy Scouts of America to be one of 16 national scout leaders to complete PALA. He completed the SCOUTStrong PALA on September 24, 2011 during Nickelodeon World Wide Day of Play. He works with Boy Scout Troop 123, Frontier Trails District, Northern Lights Council of Bismarck, North Dakota, which was the first to achieve SCOUTStrong PALA. Troop 123 received their SCOUTStrong PALA activity badges by Chief Scout Executive Bob Mazzuca on October 19, 2011 at the Rotary Club meeting in Bismarck. Dr. McDonough serves on several district and council Boy Scout committees in addition to the national Health and Safety Committee of Boy Scouts of America.

Dr. McDonough enjoys wildlife photography and had several photographs included in the 2010 Mah-Daah-Hey trail map of western North Dakota. Dr. McDonough and his wife, Dr. Denise McDonough, support endangered species wildlife conservation with the International Rhino Foundation and White Oak Conservation Center.

Dr. McDonough has long supported children with Down's syndrome at the annual Buddy Walk and children with special health care needs.  He was appointed in 2011 to the American College of Medical Genetics committee on newborn metabolic screening. He was appointed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children for a 4-year term beginning on October 1, 2011.