Dr. Peter J. Weiss

With a physi­cian for a father, Dr. Peter Weiss was attracted to med­i­cine at an early age. Intel­li­gent and hard­work­ing, he attended one of the country’s best med­ical schools at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity in St Louis where he was rec­og­nized as an out­stand­ing stu­dent. Upon grad­u­a­tion Dr. Weiss entered active ser­vice in the United States Navy.

Dur­ing his nine-years of active duty, Dr. Weiss com­pleted res­i­dency in Inter­nal Med­i­cine, fel­low­ship in Infec­tious Dis­eases and became Board Cer­ti­fied in both fields. Dis­tin­guish­ing him­self in var­i­ous duty sta­tions with the U.S. Marines, the Joint Task Force at Guan­tanamo Bay and at the Naval Hos­pi­tal, San Diego, Dr. Weiss was awarded the Navy Com­men­da­tion Medal, the Joint Ser­vice Achieve­ment Medal and the Navy Achieve­ment Medal.

In 1994, Dr. Weiss entered the pri­vate prac­tice of Infec­tious Dis­ease in Mel­bourne, Florida. A part­ner in MIMA, the pre­mier mul­ti­spe­cialty physi­cian group in east-central Florida, Dr. Weiss was acknowl­edged as a supe­rior clin­i­cian. He remem­bers that time fondly. “It was a great expe­ri­ence to prac­tice with physi­cians of that cal­iber, and I was a bet­ter doc­tor for it,” he recalls.

His high-quality prac­tice and admin­is­tra­tive tal­ent attracted the atten­tion of local health­care lead­ers, and Dr. Weiss was invited to assume the Med­ical Direc­tor­ship of Health First Health Plans. He left prac­tice to assume this role on a full-time basis in 2000, ris­ing to become Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer in 2007. “I believe I made a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence for our mem­bers and our com­mu­nity dur­ing that time. Health First Health Plans is an out­stand­ing orga­ni­za­tion, ded­i­cated to its mem­bers and to ‘doing the right thing.’ I am very grate­ful for the lead­er­ship oppor­tu­nity I had at Health First,” says Dr. Weiss. In fact, dur­ing his tenure Health First Health Plans was named one of the nations top health plans in the US News and World Report/National Com­mit­tee for Qual­ity Assur­ance (NCQA) rank­ings.

Over his career it grad­u­ally became clear to Dr. Weiss that tra­di­tional health­care, even in the best med­ical cen­ters, wasn’t result­ing in improved health or well­ness for most Amer­i­cans. In his words, “I real­ized that the great­est bur­den of ill­ness in our mem­bers was directly related to their lifestyles, and that more or bet­ter care wasn’t going to help most of them. There­after, I became com­mit­ted to help­ing indi­vid­u­als change their lives, improve their health and avoid ill­ness in the first place.”

Feel­ing this call to action, Dr. Weiss left his lead­ing role in tra­di­tional health­care in Jan­u­ary 2010 to reach peo­ple directly and help them take con­trol of their health. Know as “Dr. Pete, Well­ness Evan­ge­list” he has begun a new career as a pub­lic fig­ure — speak­ing, writ­ing, host­ing a radio show and oth­er­wise help­ing ordi­nary peo­ple to gain con­trol of their own health.  Dr. Pete cur­rently serves as Pres­i­dent of the More Health Less Care Alliance.