| Mervyn Susser is Sergievsky Professor of Epidemiology Emeritus at
Columbia. He received his medical degree in 1950 from the University of
Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He began his career in
community and primary health care in Alexandra, a township for Africans on
the outskirts of the city; in England from 1956; for nearly a decade
thereafter he taught in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at
Manchester University. His main research, in collaboration with Zena Stein,
was on epidemiological and family and cultural aspects of mental retardation
and child development, on psychiatric disorders, and on reproductive health
and neuro- developmental disorders.
Research activity, beginning in the early to mid-1950s at the
Alexandra Clinic and University Health Centre, (an African township
contiguous with the city of Johannesburg, South Africa), has been in large
part a collaboration with his wife and colleague Zena Stein, first in Alexandra with clinical epidemiological studies,
followed by epidemiological studies of obstetrics and reproduction, and
continuing on the faculty at Manchester University Medical School (1957-66)
with mental retardation, psychiatric disorders and child development.
As Professor and Head of Epidemiology at Columbia University School of
Public Health (1966-1978), this joint research moved into large-scale
studies of the epidemiology of nutritional effects on child development in
Harlem and Holland, and later into the area of miscarriage and related
studies of reproduction.
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From 1978 through 1990, Dr Susser was Sergievsky Professor of
Epidemiology and Director of the newly endowed Sergievsky Center. In this
phase, his research focused on neurodevelopmental epidemiology and
reproduction. His collaborations broadened to include the faculty recruited
to the Center_ Allan Hauser, John Kiely, Jennie Kline, Richard Neugebauer,
Ruth Ottman and not least Nigel Paneth. In this stage of his career, his
role was predominantly in consulting and advising on the selection of
topics, strategies and designs, in writing proposals, and on the analysis,
interpretation and writing of results. His research collaboration with Zena
Stein continued as before, including the move into the HIV field in the
mid-1980s, especially in South Africa.
In 1999, he served with Zena Stein, as scientific director of the
Africa Center for Population and Reproductive Research, unique in Africa,
funded mainly by the Wellcome Trust, and situated in a rural site in
Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa.
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