Papers by Gerald M Oppenheimer
When Risk Factor Epidemiology Met Mental Health: The Narrative of Cardiovascular Disease and the Type A Personality Pattern
Limited Access
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jun 14, 2007
20. Becoming the Framingham Study 1947–1950
American Public Health Association eBooks, 2022
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 2017
Most historians, epidemiologists, and physicians credit the Framingham Heart Study for introducin... more Most historians, epidemiologists, and physicians credit the Framingham Heart Study for introducing the term "risk factor" to public health and medicine. Many add that the term came from life insurance companies. This familiar history is incorrect. Taking advantage of the expanding availability of digitized and full-text searchable journals, textbooks, newspapers, and other sources, we have uncovered a deeper and broader history. Antecedent concepts (such as risk, factor, predisposition) have ancient roots. "Risk factor" began to appear in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in many industries, not just in insurance but also in finance, agriculture, and manufacturing. The term appeared in the occupational health literature in 1922. It reappeared in the 1950s in many different areas of medicine including psychiatry, surgery, cardiology, epidemiology, and aerospace medicine. Furthermore, despite the influential appearance of "risk factor" in a 1961 Framingham Heart Study publication, the term did not gain momentum in medicine and public health until the mid-1970s. While our analysis is not exhaustive, our findings are extensive enough to require a substantial revision to the history of the risk factor.
Cambridge University Press eBooks, 1993
11. Public Health Nihilism Versus Pragmatism: History, Politics, and the Control of Tuberculosis
American Public Health Association eBooks, 2022
When Risk Factor Epidemiology Met Mental Health
Reimagining Psychiatric Epidemiology in a Global Frame, Jun 3, 2022
Joseph Sonnabend and the AIDS Epidemic: Pioneering and Its Discontents
American Journal of Public Health
Joseph Sonnabend, a pioneering figure in the early effort to confront the multiple dimensions of ... more Joseph Sonnabend, a pioneering figure in the early effort to confront the multiple dimensions of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, died January 24, 2021, at the age of 88. A lengthy and admiring obituary published in the New York Times said of him that he was "one of the most important figures in the fight against AIDS, if also one of the most unheralded."1(pD6) In the current moment, when the language of heroism is routinely employed in describing the work of medical workers struggling to control COVID-19, it is sometimes difficult to recall that the life and work of those regarded as AIDS pioneers were all too often tinged by recrimination and bitter controversy. Such was the career of Sonnabend, someone who saw himself and was viewed by others as a devoted clinician and a combative iconoclast. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print June 10, 2021: e1-e3. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306291).
Viewing Psychiatric Epidemiology Within a Global Historical Framework to Shape Future Practice
JAMA Psychiatry, Jul 1, 2023
This Viewpoint discusses the benefits of rethinking the history of psychiatric epidemiology from ... more This Viewpoint discusses the benefits of rethinking the history of psychiatric epidemiology from a global perspective.
Riding the Tiger: AIDS and the Gay Community
AIDS, 1992
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Papers by Gerald M Oppenheimer