|
| Henrik Blum. Photo courtesy UC Berkeley. |
Dr. Henrik L. Blum, professor emeritus of health administration and planning at the University of California, Berkeley, and a champion of public health as social justice, died on Jan. 3, 2006 at his home in Oakland, Calif. Among his contributions is that of using community organizing skills along with social and economic concepts in the development and implementation of healthcare delivery and health policy.Of particular significance to our Section is that he is considered to be one of the true fathers of health planning.
From 1950 to 1966, he served as health officer of the Contra Costa County (California) Health Department. There he learned principles, novel to planning at the time, that he taught concurrently as a lecturer at UC Berkeley: Effective health planning requires a thorough knowledge of the many environmental, social, cultural, economic, and educational forces that shape a community, and the community's participation is essential to the resolution of its problems. Health services should be located where most needed so as to best serve as resources in those communities.
It was in 1966, when he joined the faculty of Berkeley's School of Public Health as a clinical professor, that Blum foresaw the development of a national health system, one that would involve consumers and providers in shaping health care policy and health care delivery. In 1968, Blum became a professor of community health planning. In 1970, he established the school's Program in Planning and Policy, chairing the program until his retirement in 1984.
An example of his influence in health planning is the Orange County Health Planning Council, which was the designated Health Systems Agency for Orange County, Calif. under Public Law 93-641 (1974). Several members of the Council staff were his graduates, and Dr. Blum's planning concepts were incorporated into much of its work. Its publications served, in turn, as teaching materials for his classes in health planning. He was also one of the founders of the Western Center for Health Planning in San Francisco.
|
| Henrik Blum speaking at the 1985 Sedgwick Medal Award ceremony. Courtesy APHA Archives. |
He was the author of three seminal texts focusing on the health needs of communities: Public Administration: A Public Health Viewpoint, Planning for Health (1974), and Health Planning; Notes on Comprehensive Planning for Health (1968), which was the first set of readings ever published on health planning, and a landmark in its field.Dr. Blum served as consultant to, or member of committees of the National Institutes of Health, APHA, U.S. Public Health Service, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, USAID, and the World Health Organization. He served as APHA's Vice President in 1990. Dr. Blum was interim Chairman of the Health and Medical Sciences Program that includes an experimental medical school, the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program, between 1991 and 1994. He also held teaching appointments at Johns Hopkins and Stanford University Medical Schools, received a Fulbright Scholarship to Sweden in 1986, and was a visiting professor at West China University of Medical Sciences, Chengdu, China, in 1987.
Among his many awards were APHA's Sedgwick Memorial Medal and the American Health Planning Association's Schlesinger Award, both in 1985.
Our Section awards the Henrik L. Blum Award for Excellence in Health Policy annually. It recognizes an individual, group of individuals, or an organization who/that has demonstrated excellence, creativity, and innovation in the development and/or implementation of health policy.
By John Steen, Consultant in Health Planning, Health Regulation, and Public Health jwsteen@expedient.net