He also serves as senior advisor and chair of the Policy Working Group at the Center for Work, Health, and Wellbeing, and is an affiliated scientist with the Harvard Center for Health and Happiness, working to understand the relationships between working conditions, workplace policies, and workers’ ability to thrive.

Wagner has worked closely with both the World Health Organization and International Labour Organization and has served on numerous expert committees nationally and internationally. Board-certified in both internal and preventive medicine (occupational health), he has practised rural primary care medicine and taught both medicine and public health.

He is a Fellow of the American Thoracic Society where he chaired the Ethics Committee and was honored by the American Public Health Association with the Alice Hamilton Award for lifetime achievement, the American Thoracic Society with the John Peters award, and the American College of Occupational and Environmental Health with a Presidential Award. He is a graduate of Harvard College (Boston, MA) and Albert Einstein College of Medicine (New York).