⏐ VOICES FROM THE PAST ⏐

Mervyn Susser (1921–2014): Fighter for Social Justice and Pioneer in Epidemiology | Elizabeth Fee, PhD, Theodore M. Brown, PhD, and Wesline Manuelpillai, BA

MERVYN SUSSER, MB, BCH, FRCP(E), DPH, was one of the towering figures of epidemiology in the 20th century.1 From the start, he drew attention to the interrelationships between health, disease, and social injustice. His influence extended to the foundations of life course epidemiology, genetic epidemiology, and global health (later including HIV/AIDS), among other areas. Much of his work was conducted with his wife and intellectual partner, Zena Stein. He was born in South Africa in 1921, the son of immigrants who left Latvia because of persecution of the Jewish population. In a rural area, his parents ran a modest store and hotel.2 Though poor by the standards of White South Africans, Susser was aware that his family had resources and privileges denied to others. After the death of his mother, he went to boarding school in Durban, hundreds of miles from home, where he met Stein and her family. In World War II, Susser enlisted in the South African army to fight Nazism; five years later, he studied medicine at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. As a student, he began campaigning against the apartheid system of racial segregation. His career in community

1316 | Voices From the Past | Fee et al.

and primary health care began in Alexandra, South Africa. In the early 1950s, he and Stein opened a clinic in this primarily Black township to provide medical care to non-Whites who were largely ignored by the medical system. The Lancet published their study of community health, “Medical Care in a South African Township” in 1955.3 Susser and Stein were strongly influenced (as were many others) by Sidney and Emily Kark, who were developing community health programs for rural areas of South Africa.4 They fought apartheid alongside Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress, and helped write the health section of the 1954 Freedom Charter, which is still relevant today. The connections between health and social justice, so apparent in South Africa, remained central to their personal and professional lives. In 1965, Susser was invited to chair the Division of Epidemiology at the Columbia University School of Public Health. His lectures became the basis of his influential work, Causal Thinking in the Health Sciences.5 He also founded the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center, with a mission to explore the developmental origins of neurological disorders. His strong program of research

began to integrate genetics with epidemiological studies, and developed methods of screening for neurodevelopmental disabilities in low-income countries. When the HIV/AIDS epidemic broke out in New York City in the 1980s, Susser and Stein were among a small group of established chronic disease epidemiologists who worked to fight the epidemic at home. HIV/ AIDS also drew their attention back to South Africa, where, by the late 1980s, the epidemic posed a grave threat to the Black population. Their work there helped influence the newly formed democratic government in 1994 to make the first serious moves to address the epidemic. Susser served as editor-inchief of the American Journal of Public Health from 1992 to 1998. In 2009, he and Stein published Eras in Epidemiology: The Evolution of Ideas, describing the historical evolution of epidemiology.6 An earlier and shorter version of that work was published in the American Journal of Public Health in 1996 and is excerpted here. Q

About the Authors Elizabeth Fee is with the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD. Theodore M. Brown and Wesline Manuelpillai are with the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY.

Correspondence should be sent to Elizabeth Fee, National Library of Medicine, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894 (e-mail: [email protected]). Reprints can be ordered at http://www.ajph. org by clicking the “Reprints” link. This article was accepted February 9, 2015. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2015.302633

Contributors E. Fee and T. M. Brown contributed equally to the selection and editing of the excerpt and writing the biosketch. W. Manuelpillai assisted with the editing.

Acknowledgments We are grateful to Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, MPH, for providing the photograph of Mervyn Susser and for sharing many details about his life and accomplishments.

Endnotes 1. Ezra Susser and Sandro Galea, “In Memoriam: Mervyn Susser, MB, BCh, DPH,” American Journal of Epidemiology 180, no. 10 (2014): 961–963. 2. William Yardley, “Mervyn Susser, 92, Dies; Studied Illness and Society,” New York Times, August 26, 2014: B16. 3. Mervyn Susser et al., “Medical Care in a South African Township,” Lancet 268, no. 6870 (1955): 912–915. 4. Theodore M. Brown and Elizabeth Fee, “Sidney Kark and John Cassel: Social Medicine Pioneers and South African Emigrés,” American Journal of Public Health 92, no. 11 (2002): 1744–1745. 5. Mervyn Susser, Causal Thinking in the Health Sciences: Concepts and Strategies of Epidemiology (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1973). 6. Mervyn Susser and Zena Stein, Eras in Epidemiology: The Evolution of Ideas (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009).

American Journal of Public Health | July 2015, Vol 105, No. 7

Mervyn Susser (1921-2014): Fighter for Social Justice and Pioneer in Epidemiology.

Mervyn Susser (1921-2014): Fighter for Social Justice and Pioneer in Epidemiology. - PDF Download Free
444KB Sizes 2 Downloads 8 Views