Our Public Health Heroes...

Public Health Hero - Dr Marc Danzon

Nominated by Jessica Imbert - Policy Officer, EU Systems

Dr Marc Danzon has been WHO Regional Director for Europe since 2000 and his second mandate runs until 2010. Prior to this, Dr Danzon served as director of public health in France’s national federation of mutual insurance societies, a non-for-profit organization. He has contributed significantly to the work tackling childhood obesity, and I feel his community-based approach should be taken as a an example.

Public Health Hero - Robert Koch

Nominated by Ralph Hughes - Policy Officer, Health Systems

Robert Koch can be seen as the father of microbiology and the man who almost single-handedly discovered proofs for Germ Theory, the theory that microorganisms spread disease. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his tuberculosis findings in 1905. He is considered one of the founders of microbiology, and inspired such major figures as Paul Ehrlich and Gerhard Domagk. Not only did Koch prove the existence of germs but he proved that tuberculosis are mycobacteria, a different form of bacteria.

Public Health Hero - Joseph Goldberger

Nominated by Frazer Goodwin - Project Manager, Global Health

My public health heroes are in fact representative of all those who battle against orthodoxy and vested interests to protect public health. John Snow - frequently cited as the founder of epidemiology with his recognition of the water borne nature of cholera is an early example. For me, what makes him a bigger hero is his interventionist approach whereby he removed the handle of the Broad Street pump - the source of a cholera outbreak, so as to stem the spread of the disease. However, his work has been acknowledged widely and has a great many plaudits and so my choice of hero is someone who similarly discovered the cause of a disease and then had to fight scientific orthodoxy as well as powerful vested economic and political interests in the cause of public health - Joseph Goldberger

Goldberger was born in Hungary but emigrated to the USA as a child and entered the public health service in 1899 providing health inspections of new immigrants entering New York. After working both in the US and in Mexico and Peuto Rico he was requested to investigate a widespread disease in the Southern United States that afflicted the poor and killed large numbers: more than 1,300 deaths in South Carolina alone in 1915 for example. He found that the disease was a deficiency disease of vitamin B12, and that the almost exclusive corn diet of the poor southerners was the cause. This went against the current scientific orthodoxy attributing it to a combination of the genetic stock of the southern poor and a contagion. His fight to prove the real causes of the disease and to intervene so as to prevent and treat it eventually proved successful, but it did take the rest of his life and the efforts of supporters afterwards. Eventually his widow received a pension of $125 a month following the passage of a special congressional bill honouring his work.

Public Health Hero - ’Black Report’ Committee

Nominated by Jo Jewell - Policy Officer, Health Determinants

When thinking about who I would choose as my public health hero, I realised that, for me, it was impossible to separate a public health hero from a political hero. Achieving change in public health requires having both a political vision and political ambition. Recognising that the status quo is not good enough has resulted in many great public health achievements.

Initially I was tempted to choose the Cuban government for ensuring that, despite an adverse economic situation and a hostile geopolitical climate, the Cuban population receives healthcare services that consistently place it higher in health indicators ranking than its economic might would predict. It should also be credited with keeping open the debate as to whether free market economies really make for a healthier population.

However, in my search for a public health hero that would be more palatable for the majority of our readers, I choose the committee responsible for writing and publishing the Black Report. Commissioned by a Labour government, but published under Margaret Thatcher, the report revealed the huge health inequalities that affected, and affect to this day, the British population. The report found that poverty was a key determinant of poor health, and that the gap in terms of health between Social Class V (lower socio-economic) and Social Class I (upper class) was continuing to grow. The report was published on the August Bank Holiday in 1980 in an attempt to reduce the negative publicity that it would provoke, and even then only 260 copies were made available for the media. Thankfully the findings were heard, and subsequent studies by Whitehead and Acheson confirmed what the Black Report had first revealed. The report helped to raise awareness in the UK of the huge health inequalities that continue to exist across the country, despite its position as one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

Public Health Hero - Nelson Mandela

Nominated by Caroline Bollars - Policy Manager

For my public health hero I chose Nelson Mandela. During his presidency and beyond, Mandela campaigned for increased awareness of the HIV/Aids epidemic that faces South Africa. He was critcal of Thabo Mbeki’s policy of denial, and when his eldest son died as a result of AIDS, Mandela called for renewed efforts to fight the disease, challenging the taboo that surrounds it across the African continent: "Let us give publicity to HIV/Aids and not hide it, because [that is] the only way to make it appear like a normal illness." Mandela organised a star-studded rock concert, which was held in Cape Town in 2003 in support of his Aids campaign.

It should also be noted that he has worked closely with his third wife, Graca Machel, to tackle the high levels of maternal mortality across the region.

Improving the health of the South African people has played a huge part in Mandela’s life, and it remains one of his greatest commitments. The Nelson Mandela foundation continues to support health initiatives, and there is a Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights.

Public Health Hero - Dr William Henry Duncan

Nominated by Monika Kosinska - Secretary General

It was not easy choosing just one of the many inspiring individuals in recent history that have made a difference to public health. I was introduced to public health through the team working in Merseyside and the North West of England, and therefore the role that Liverpool and its surroundings played in the development of the modern public health movement is something I became aware of early on in my career. I considered nominating Professor John Ashton, CBE, who was Regional Director of Public Health when I first started working on the issues, as his pioneering work in Liverpool on HIV/AIDS as well as teenage sexual and reproductive health is an amazing example of local community approaches to population health.

However, I want to nominate Dr William Henry Duncan as my public health hero, and for me one of the fathers of, not only the public health movement, but also the role of the ’physician-activist’. Whilst working as a GP, he started researching the living conditions of his patients in order to determine whether this could be linked to their poor health - the popular thinking at the time often linked the bad health of poor people to issues of loose morals or indeed weak constitutions. He was shocked by what he found and started a lifelong campaign for improved sanitation and housing for the poor. As a member of the Health of Towns Association in Liverpool he helped draft Liverpool’s first Sanitary Act in 1846.

Duncan was appointed Medical Officer of Health on 1st January 1847, the first Medical Officer not only in Liverpool but in the country. Duncan’s public recognition of the link between housing conditions and the outbreak of diseases such as cholera, smallpox and typhus helped changed the way the city, and the country, approached sanitation and housing improving the lives of Victorian Britain’s poorest.