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April 2005, Vol 95, No. 4 | American Journal of Public Health 602-610
© 2005 American Public Health Association
DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2003.026419

PUBLIC HEALTH THEN AND NOW

Becoming the Framingham Study 1947–1950

Gerald M. Oppenheimer, PhD, MPH

Gerald M. Oppenheimer is with the Department of Health and Nutrition Sciences, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and the History and Ethics Center, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY.

Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Gerald M. Oppenheimer, PhD, MPH, Department of Health and Nutrition Sciences, Brooklyn College (CUNY), 2900 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11210 (e-mail: geraldo{at}brooklyn.cuny.edu).

In the epidemiological imagination, the Framingham Heart Study has attained iconic status, both as the prototype of the cohort study and as a result of its scientific success.

When the Public Health Service launched the study in 1947, epidemiological knowledge of coronary heart disease was poor, and epidemiology primarily involved the study of infectious disease. In constructing their investigation, Framingham’s initiators had to invent new approaches to epidemiological research. These scientific goals were heavily influenced by the contending institutional and personal interests buffeting the study.

The study passed through vicissitudes and stages during its earliest years as its organizers grappled to define its relationship to medicine, epidemiology, and the local community.




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