Dr. Jack Geiger received his medical degree from Western Reserve University School of Medicine in 1958 and trained in internal medicine on the Harvard Service of Boston City Hospital from 1958-64. During this period he also earned a degree in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health, was a research fellow at the Channing and Thorndike Laboratories, Harvard Medical School, and a postdoctoral research fellow with the Joint Training Program in Social Science and Medicine, Harvard University.

Most of Dr. Geiger's professional career has been devoted to the problems of health, poverty, and human rights. He initiated the community health center model in the U.S., combining community-oriented primary care, public health interventions, and civil rights and community empowerment and development initiatives, and was a leader in the development of the national health center network of more than 800 urban, rural, and migrant centers currently serving an estimated nine million low-income patients.

Dr. Geiger's work in human rights spans more than five decades. He is a founding member (1961) and past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the U.S. affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1985. During the past three decades he has published more than 25 scientific articles and book chapters on medical and biological effects of nuclear weapons, lectured widely on this subject in the U.S. and Europe, and appeared in "The Last Epidemic" and other documentary films. Dr. Geiger is also a founding member (1986) and immediate past president of Physicians for Human Rights, a national organization of health professionals whose goals are to bring the skills of the medical profession to the investigation and documentation of human rights abuses, violations of medical neutrality, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and to provide medical and humanitarian aid to victims of repression. The organization shared in the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1998.

Presenting the Public Health Hero Award to Dr. Geiger is Meredith Minkler, Dr. P.H., a professor of health and social behavior at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. Her research interests include social support and health of the elderly; the political economy of aging; intergenerational issues; and community organizing/building for health. Professor Minkler was founding director of the UC Berkeley Center on Aging and a cofounder of the San Francisco-based Tenderloin Senior Organizing Project (TSOP).

Given the unprecedented prosperity of the past decade, with rising incomes and record low unemployment rates, one might expect a reduction in the number of uninsured; however, it continues to rise. Between 1992 and 1998, the number of Americans without health insurance rose from 39 million to more than 44 million. This amounts to approximately 16 percent of the entire U.S. population and is more than 18 percent of those under age 65. Of these 44 million, 11 million – one quarter – are children.

The School of Public Health has a strong record on issues related to access and delivery of care, including efforts undertaken at two of the school’s centers: the Center for Health and Public Policy Studies, directed by Professor Helen Halpin, which among other things provides data and organizes convenings that support public policies to develop an affordable, high-quality health care system; and the Nicholas C. Petris Center on Health Care Markets and Consumer Welfare, headed by Professor Richard Scheffler, which focuses on issues involving consumer protection, affordability and access to health care – especially for those with low and moderate-incomes – and the role of information in consumer choice.

Stephen Shortell, Ph.D., the Blue Cross of California Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Management, is well regarded for his work in the area of integrated systems and community-focused health care, while Professor Sylvia Guendelman examines access to care for disadvantaged populations, including the working poor.

School of Public Health Professor Eric Stover, directs the Human Rights Center on the UC Berkeley campus. Among its activities is the formation of research groups to study the health, social, and cultural consequences of gross violations of human rights and the rules of war. One such group, the Forced Migration Project, studied the health status and access to health care of refugees in Santa Clara County. The investigation has also examined the ways in which refugee status affects clinical treatment as reflected in the medical record.

Currently under development is a project to examine the historical, legal, and social aspects of the intersection between health and human rights in times of peace and war. The goal is to examine a wide range of issues, including refugee health care, forced psychiatric confinement, human experimentation, medical neutrality, and individual and social suffering. The project will bring together collaborators with national and international perspectives to describe the methods and procedures that have been used by medical and forensic investigators to expose and document mass killings and the social and economic consequences of conventional weapons.