Dobtor Allan Rosenfield, Women's Health Advocate, 75, NY Times
DGH
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/nyregion/16rosenfield.html?ref=obituaries
Dr. Allan Rosenfield, Women's Health Advocate, Dies at 75
By H. ROGER SEGELKEN [New York Times]
Allan Rosenfield, who as dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at
Columbia University became a leading advocate for women's health during the
global H.I.V./AIDS epidemic, died on Sunday [October 12, 2008] at his home
in Hartsdale, New York. He was 75.
The cause was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., said his son, Paul
Rosenfield.
Dr. Rosenfield, who learned he had A.L.S. in 2005, also had another
progressive disease, myasthenia gravis, but he continued to work until his
retirement in June 2008, after 22 years as dean of the school. He worked for
more than four decades on women's reproductive health and human rights,
innovative family planning studies and strategies to address maternal deaths
because of AIDS in developing countries. Perhaps his most notable effort was
the Mother-to-Child Transmission program, which has so far brought
comprehensive health care to more than 500,000 women and infants.
When Columbia University's president, Lee C. Bollinger, announced in 2006
that the public health school's main building on West 168th Street would be
named for Dr. Rosenfield, he said, "Over the last three decades at Columbia,
Allan has not only inspired and trained generations of public health
leaders, he has helped define what a school of public health should be."
Among the global initiatives organized from the school during Dr. Rosenfield's
tenure were the $50 million Averting Maternal Death and Disability Program
(from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) and the International Center
for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs (with $125 million from the President's
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief).
Dr. Rosenfield was born April 28, 1933, in Brookline, Massachusetts. He
received his B.A. in biochemistry from Harvard College in 1955 and his M.D.
from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1959.
In the 1960s, before H.I.V./AIDS became a global concern, Dr. Rosenfield
worked in Thailand with the Population Council, a nonprofit group, advising
the Thai ministry of public health on reproductive, maternal and child
health issues - an effort he later recognized as the turning point of his
career.
At a time when the annual population growth rate in Thailand was 3.3 percent
and the country faced a severe shortage of physicians, Dr. Rosenfield helped
develop a national family planning program that trained auxiliary midwives
to prescribe birth control. By 2000, Thailand's population growth rate had
dropped to 0.8 percent a year.
In 1975, Dr. Rosenfield joined the Columbia faculty as a professor of public
health and obstetrics and gynecology, as well as director of the school's
new Center for Population and Family Health. He ordered a dual focus - the
global outreach that the public-health school would become known for, and
efforts in Columbia's immediate neighborhood in Upper Manhattan [New York],
where community-based programs included the Young Adult Clinic for
adolescent women, the Young Men's Clinic and clinics in intermediate and
high schools.
Dr. Rosenfield worked, with other members of the Columbia faculty, in the
neighborhood clinics through 1986, when he was appointed dean of the Mailman
School and administrative and fund-raising duties became more
time-consuming.
The clinical experience, however, had provided insight to problems on a
global scale, and in 1985 he published, with Deborah Maine, a call to action
for maternal and child health, known in the field as MCH, in The Lancet. The
article, "Maternal Mortality - A Neglected Tragedy: Where is the M in MCH?"
drew attention to the many third-world women who died in pregnancy and
childbirth. He said that the crisis in women's health was worsening, and
that providers were focusing on children at the expense of women and
families. As a result, international health groups and policy makers began
to focus on the universal shortage of maternal health care, including access
to emergency obstetric care. Dr. Rosenfield used the support of Gates
Foundation to establish more than 85 "safe motherhood" initiatives in 50
countries around the world.
Speaking out at the World AIDS Conference in 2000 in Durban, South Africa,
Dr. Rosenfield again demanded that attention be paid to maternal care. With
the support of nine private foundations, he started the MTCT-Plus Initiative
to address mother-to-child transmission of the disease. Dr. Rosenfield was
national chairman of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 1985
to 1986 and was chairman of the Program Board of the American Foundation for
AIDS Research.
He is survived by his wife, Clare, of Hartsdale; a son, Paul, of Riverdale,
New York; a brother, Jim, of Manhattan; a daughter, Jill Baker of Brookline;
and five grandchildren.
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