VIEW WEBSITE ABOUT RALPH’S CHILDREN’S BOOK at www.gillyandthesnowcats.com
Ralph S. Bovard, MD, MPH, FACSM
Dr. Ralph Bovard, MD, MPH, FACSM, is based in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. He is the Program Director for the HealthPartners / University of Minnesota Occupational and Environmental Medicine Residency and is board certified in Preventive Medicine & Occupational Medicine.
Dr. Bovard graduated from the University of Minnesota medical school in 1984. He is boarded in Preventive Medicine and has a master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Arizona. He earned a BA in Literature from St. Olaf College (1976) and studied at Oxford University during his senior year.
He has over 30 years of clinical practice experience, working in occupational, preventive, musculoskeletal and sports medicine, and has been named a Twin Cities “top doctor.” He has special interests in cardiovascular fitness and body composition as they relate to overall health and wellness, and to the concept of the “industrial athlete."
He is a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine, was president of the Northland Chapter of ACSM (2002-03) and served on the ACSM board of trustees (2005-08). He served as a member of the ACSM “Exercise is Medicine” task force and was a consultant for the Therapeutic Use Exemption Committee of the US Anti-Doping Agency from 2005-15.
Dr. Bovard has worked
- in altitude and cold injury research on Mt. McKinley (1983)
- as a missionary doctor in Papua, New Guinea (1986-87)
- an Everest expedition physician (1989)
- as an Aspen, Colorado ski clinic MD (1990-93)
- as the set physician for the movie “River Wild” (1993)
- as the set physician for the movie “Cliffhanger” (1993)
- and as a base physician at Palmer Station, Antarctica (1996-97)
Dr. Bovard has traveled internationally with the US Alpine Ski Team & Figure Skating Teams. Dr. Bovard was a co-founder, CMO, and on the board of directors of Exos, Inc. (a medical thermoplastic casting company) from 2007-10.
He was an executive producer on the film The Quiet Hour; and is in collaboration with Frenzy Films (London) on a screenplay called The White Shaman. He competes in masters swimming and xc-skiing.
RALPH BOVARD, WRITER
Ralph is a member of the Society for Children's Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI) and the Loft writing studio in Minneapolis. He has a bachelor of arts in literature from St. Olaf College and studied literature at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, during his senior year. The long list of writers associated with Oxford includes John Fowles, Theodor Geisel, Thomas Middleton, Samuel Johnson, Christopher Hitchens, Robert Graves, Evelyn Waugh, Lewis Carroll, Aldous Huxley, Oscar Wilde, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Graham Greene, Joseph Heller, the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley,John Donne,A. E. Housman,W. H. Auden, and T. S. Eliot. (see aerial panorama of Oxford below)
GILLY & THE SNOW CATS
"My children’s novel Gilly & the Snowcats reflects my love of adventure and nature and the outdoors and is meant to help young people understand the interdependence of all creatures, the joy and inevitable pain of living fully, and the power of quietly savoring the pursuit and fulfillment of your dreams, even when others cannot or will not see.”