Public Health Pioneer Myron Wegman Dies at 95

Myron E. Wegman, M.D., professor emeritus of pediatrics and communicable diseases and dean emeritus of the U-M School of Public Health, died April 14 at age 95.

Wegman’s distinguished career spanned seven decades and included periods as a full-time clinical pediatrician as well as more than 50 years in the public health field, including serving as dean of the University of Michigan School of Public Health from 1960-74. He was appointed to the medical school faculty in 1961.

Wegman began his career as a pediatric consultant in Maryland and later served with the New York City Health Department. He spent eight years at the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (now the Pan American Health Organization), the regional office of the World Health Organization, and was secretary general for his last three years there. Wegman’s academic career included appointments at the Yale University School of Medicine, the Johns Hopkins Schools of Hygiene and Medicine, Cornell University School of Medicine, Columbia University School of Public Health, and the School of Tropical Medicine of the University of Puerto Rico. He also served as chair and professor of pediatrics of the Louisiana State University School of Medicine, and as president of the American Public Health Association in 1972.

An early proponent of broad training programs to modernize maternal and child health care, Wegman began publishing an annual summary of vital statistics — a synthesis of government records on births, fertility rates, infant mortality and other data — in Pediatrics in 1949, a task he continued until 1997.

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