An outspoken visionary, Dr. Breslow has served his profession as president of the American Public Health Association, public health director for the State of California, dean of the UCLA School of Public Health, and chair of the Public Health Commission of Los Angeles County. He successfully lobbied for the establishment of a state tumor registry and provided supporting evidence for the US Surgeon General’s landmark 1964 report linking smoking to lung cancer.
Dr. Breslow's research was among the first to assert that following simple lifestyle habits could significantly extend and enhance life. Setting the stage for the modern wellness movement, Dr. Breslow's landmark studies in Alameda County in the 1960s resulted in the promulgation of "Seven Healthy Habits," including not smoking, moderation in consumption of alcohol, regular exercise, weight control, eating regular meals (especially breakfast), avoiding between-meal snacks, and getting a good night's sleep—health advice we now consider common sense.
He is an expert witness in tobacco-related hearings across the country, and has consulted to local, state, national, and world health agencies. He is founding editor of the Annual Review of Public Health, editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Public Health, and a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. He has been affiliated with UCLA for more than 30 years and is currently active as a professor emeritus at the UCLA School of Public Health and a member of UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Respectfully referred to as "Mr. Public Health" by colleagues across the nation, Dr. Breslow has helped set the course for modern thinking about health, diet, and fitness.
Award Presenter
Philip R. Lee, M.D., is professor emeritus of social medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, a senior scholar at the Institute for Health Policy Studies, and a consulting professor in human biology at Stanford University.
A recipient of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health's 2002 Public Health Heroes award, he is noted for his work as a practitioner, advocate, researcher, policymaker, administrator, and public health leader. In 1965 he went to Washington, D.C., and served as deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Health Education and Welfare; in 1969 he was selected as UC San Francisco's third chancellor; and in 1972 he established UCSF's Institute of Health Policy Studies.
The Challenge: Staying Well
While the HIV/AIDS pandemic is sweeping the globe and hepatitis C is on the upswing, the threat of bioterrorism, utilizing infectious diseases such as anthrax and smallpox, grabs the headlines. However, it is not infectious diseases that kill most of us in the United States. According to the most recent World Health Report, the majority of Americans succumb to illnesses such as cancer, cardio-pulmonary diseases, stroke, and diabetes. For all of these, we have some data identifying behaviors that increase our risks, yet prevention has not taken prominence in our nation’s public health agenda. In a sense, the quietly emerging health challenge in the Untied States is maintaining people's good health.
As Dr. Breslow has said, health is more than the absence of disease and medicine is more than a search for a diagnosis. Health practitioners need to recognize the importance of lifestyle choices in the maintenance of good health. They need to expand the traditional complaint-response system of medicine to include recommended activities that have been proven to promote and preserve good health. They need to encourage their patients to make healthy lifestyle choices and to stick by them.
Though they were proposed in the 1960s, more than four decades of research have largely confirmed the wisdom of Lester Breslow's suggested "Healthy Habits"— don't smoke; moderate alcohol consumption; get seven to eight hours of sleep per night; exercise regularly; eat regular meals; start your day with a balanced breakfast; maintain moderate weight for your height. However, the very same simplicity that makes research-supported behavioral recommendations seem achievable, allows us to dismiss their importance to our good health.
Nevertheless, researchers and health practitioners need to communicate with each other and the public. Researchers should not be afraid to make recommendations from their findings. Health practitioners should keep informed. There is no mechanism in place that rapidly puts scientific findings into practice. Pap tests to screen for cervical irregularities, for example, were developed a full 25 years before they became part of a routine gynecological exam. In that time, approximately 250,000 women, 10,000 per year, died of cervical cancer.
The School of Public Health Responds
Founded in 1984 by faculty concerned with how social and behavioral factors affect health, the University of California, Berkeley, Wellness Letter and its associated web site, Wellnessletter.com, help provide more than 350,000 readers with a sense of control over their health choices. Relying upon the expertise of the School of Public Health and other researchers at UC Berkeley, as well as top scientists from around the world, the Wellness Letter translates leading-edge research into practical advice on a wide variety of subjects related to food and nutrition, exercise, self-care, preventive medicine, and emotional well-being.
The School also produces a series of UC Berkeley Wellness Guides designed as manuals that help lay readers understand issues surrounding parenting, disability, health care, and other life issues.
Students interested in the application of nutrition knowledge and research to the improvement of health may take part in the School of Public Health’s Public Health Nutrition Program. Coursework for this program focuses on the role of nutrition for the maintenance of health and the prevention of disease.
Faculty approaches to nutrition research range from development of nutrition evaluation questionnaires which allow for measurable assessment of actual food intake and have been incorporated into studies by the National Cancer Institute and on the Russian space station Mir; to longitudinal study of obesity as a disease risk factor in girls and women and the role of antioxidant consumption in reducing the incidence of cancer and heart disease.
