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VOICES FROM THE PAST |
John P. Allegrante is with Teachers College and the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, and the National Center for Health Education, New York, NY. David A. Sleet is with the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Ga. J. Michael McGinnis is with The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, NJ.
Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to John P. Allegrante, PhD, Department of Health and Behavior Studies, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 W 120th St, Box 114, New York, NY 10027 (e-mail: jpa1{at}columbia.edu).
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IN THE PANTHEON OF HEALTH education, Mayhew Derryberry stands out as a leader of uncommon vision and uncommon action. As the first chief of health education in the federal government, Derryberry catalyzed the nation’s earliest efforts in heath promotion and disease prevention. He was born December 25, 1902, in Columbia, Tenn. Although little is known about his early life, we know that he was eager to make something of himself, starting when he enrolled at the University of Tennessee, earning a baccalaureate degree with majors in chemistry and mathematics in 1925.1
Derryberry began his career in 1926 with the American Child Health Association, where he was the associate director of one of the first large-scale studies of the health status of the nation’s schoolchildren. A year later, he earned his master’s degree in education and psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University. In 1933, the year he completed a doctorate in health and physical education from New York University, he moved to the New York City Health Department, where he held the position of secretary to the sanitary superintendent.
But it was in 1937, when Derryberry moved to Washington, DC, and joined the US Public Health Service as a senior public health analyst, that his career advanced dramatically. He became chief of the newly formed Division of Health Education in the Public Health Service in 1941 and began assembling a talented team of behavioral scientists to study the nexus of behavior, social factors, and disease. He recruited 2 young social psychologists, Godfrey Hochbaum and Irwin Rosenstock, who conducted the seminal study of the role of health beliefs in explaining utilization of public health screening services.2,3 This work spawned development of the Health Belief Model,4 which provided an important theoretical foundation for modern heath education practice.
A prolific writer, Derryberry authored and collaborated on papers that dispensed advice and wisdom on an astonishingly wide range of topics. He wrote on the importance of immunizations, the nutritional status of children, measurement and statistical methods, the relationship between social factors and health, program evaluation, and family planning. Many of his papers are considered classics and have been collected in 2 published anthologies.5,6 Derryberry also held key leadership roles with the American Public Health Association, the Society for Public Health Education, and what is now the Association of State and Territorial Directors of Health Promotion and Public Health Education.
Derryberry ended his 26-year career in federal government service in 1963, accepting an assignment as a US Agency for International Development family planning advisor to India. He continued to do international work and held appointments on the faculties of the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Minnesota, where he taught and mentored students who later followed in his footsteps. Derryberry died at the Public Health Service Hospital in San Francisco on December 24, 1979, at the age of 77; he was survived by his wife, Helen F. Derryberry, who died in 1988. He left an important legacy by engaging behavioral and social scientists in the problems of public health and by elucidating the valuable role that health education can play in the improvement of human health.
William Griffiths, Malcolm Merrill, and Dorothy Nyswander—all contemporaries and long-time colleagues of his—wrote that "‘Derry,’ as Dr. Mayhew Derryberry was known to thousands of his public health colleagues, probably did more to develop and enhance the profession of public heath education than any other single individual."7(p445) More importantly, he showed us how people of unflagging courage, vision, and leadership can make a profound difference in the history of public health.8
Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge partial support from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
We thank Dr Ray Marks, who assisted with biographical and historical research.
Footnotes
Contributors
J. P. Allegrante did the biographical research and led the writing. D. A. Sleet and J. M. McGinnis assisted with writing and editing the article.
Accepted for publication August 27, 2003.
References
1. Nolte A, Beyrer MK. Key leaders in health education: a century of commitment. Eta Sigma Gamma Monogr Series. 1990;8:18–19.
2. Hochbaum GM. Public Participation in Medical Screening Programs: A Socio-Psychological Study. Washington, DC: US Public Health Service; 1958. PHS publication 572.
3. Rosenstock IM. Why people use health services. Milbank Mem Fund Q. 1966;44:94–127.
4. Janz NK, Becker MH. The Health Belief Model: a decade later. Health Educ Q. 1984;11:1–47.[ISI][Medline]
5. Educating for Health: Selected Papers of Mayhew Derryberry. New York, NY: National Center for Health Education; 1987.
6. Allegrante JP, Sleet DA, eds. Derryberry’s Educating for Health: A Foundation for Contemporary Health Education Practice. San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass. In press.
7. Griffiths W, Merrill MH, Nyswander DB. Mayhew Derryberry, PhD, 1901–1979. Am J Public Health. 1980;70:445–446.
8. McGinnis JM. Foreword. In: Allegrante JP, Sleet DA, eds. Derryberry’s Educating for Health: A Foundation for Contemporary Health Education Practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. In press.
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