Dr. M. Harvey Brenner, who has taught health policy and management for more than 30 years at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is also an international expert on the relationship between economic factors and mental health. Died of sepsis. German Herzentrum in Munich, Germany. A resident of Baltimore and Fort Worth, Texas, he was 82 years old.
“His 1979 Lancet article, Unemployment, Economic Growth, and Mortality, was a groundbreaking and definitive work on what we now call health disparities. and international scholar,” said David P. Cistola, Ph.D., a colleague and friend of 10 years and professor and director of the Center for Diabetes and Metabolism at Paul L. Foster University. School of Medicine at Texas Tech University Health Science Center in El Paso.
Both men became acquainted when Dr. Cistola was at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth.
“That’s when I learned about Harvey and his work, which was a study of the effects of the economy on health and the effects of the economy on nations,” Dr. Sistra said. “He was a very eloquent speaker, and his students and colleagues flocked to his lectures. He was extraordinary.”
Dr. Jose A. Pagan, professor in the School of Global Public Health at New York University and dean of health policy and management, knew Dr. Brenner from the days they worked together in Fort Worth, Texas.
“Harvey was an overall nice guy who always had a lot on his mind. He was a scholar and a mentor,” Dr. Pagan said. “He loved solving problems and understanding the health implications when people lost their jobs due to recessions, recessions and most recently his COVID.”
Born Meyer Harvey Brenner – he never used his first name and was known as M. Harvey Brenner – was the son of Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Berlin. Born and raised in New York City, his father was Robert Brenner, an international import-export executive, and his mother Ethel Brenner was a homemaker.
After graduating from the Ramaz School in Manhattan, Dr. Brenner received a BA in Economics from the City University of New York in 1962. He received his master’s degree in 1964 and his doctorate. In 1966, he majored in sociology at Yale University.
He was an Associate Professor of Epidemiology, Public Health and Sociology at Yale University School of Medicine and Yale University before coming to Baltimore in 1972 and joining what is now the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. There, he engaged in his research operations centered on the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Mental Health. He was also Director of Research at the Center for Urban Planning Studies.
From 1979 to 2004, Dr. Brenner taught at Bloomberg’s Health Policy Management, Behavioral and Social Sciences, and Arts and Sciences departments.
From 1996 to the present he was Visiting Professor of Social Medicine and Health Research at the Institute of Epidemiology at the Medical University of Hannover, Germany, and from 1996 to 2005 Professor of Epidemiology at the Institute for Health Sciences at the Technical University of Berlin. I was.
He returned to New Haven, Connecticut in 2001 and spent the next two years as a visiting professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale University School of Medicine.
In 2005, he joined the School of Public Health at the University of North Texas Health Science Center (Fort Worth), where he taught until his appointment as Distinguished Professor of Public Health in 2020.
In 1965, Dr. Brenner began investigating and researching the relationship between economic fluctuations and their impact on mental and physical health, leading to the occurrence of suicide, homicide, heart attack, stroke, and cirrhosis of the liver.
“The long-term trend of economic growth and changes in employment are the main problems in mortality … suicide is the best economic indicator we have … it is a sign of failure,” he said in 1980. explained in an Evening Sun interview in 2016.
A 2009 article in the Baltimore Sun reported that “suicide rates, like depression rates, rise when the economy is down.”
“It’s a pattern so regular in most of the world’s developed countries that it’s effectively become an economic indicator,” Dr. Brenner explains in the article. “This is a standard feature of a recession.”
A noted scholar of the economic impact on public health, he did not retire until his death. Most recently, he wrote and published on how COVID-19 is linked to depression, anxiety, and suicide. He also worked tirelessly to improve the health of disadvantaged communities.
“His book, Psychosis and the Economy, spawned decades of research into how economic change (particularly unemployment) impacts suicide and chronic disease mortality in the United States and the developed world,” said Family.
In 1996, Dr. Brenner received the Career Award for Scientific Excellence from the American Public Health Association for pioneering the field of health inequalities due to socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity.
He has served as an advisor to the U.S. Congressional Joint Economic Committee, Congressional Research Service, U.S. Treasury Department, European Union, Ford Foundation, and Carey Foundation.
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Driven by a strong curiosity, Dr. Brenner has written and published extensively on a variety of topics, including political philosophy, sociology, economics, psychiatry, statistics, and nonlinear physics.
According to his bio, “He was a tireless defender of academic freedom with a deep concern for the well-being of others”. He was a great fellow and will be missed for his amazing sense of justice and humor.”
[ Monsignor Joseph L. Luca, a longtime priest in Howard County, dies ]
His family established the M. Harvey Brenner Institute to preserve his legacy and ensure that his work in progress is completed and published. His book Life, Death and the Economy will be published posthumously by Oxford University Press. Several articles will also be published examining the unique impact of the COVID-19-induced recession on US and global mortality.
Dr. Brenner, who lived at the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore, also had a home in Fort Worth.
A graveside service was held on Friday at the Hebrew Cemetery in Baltimore.
He was bequeathed by his wife of 20 years, Dr. Elke Heckner, a professor of German at the University of Iowa. his daughter, Rebecca Windass of Hannover, Germany; Three stepdaughters, Jillian Storms of Columbia, April Hill of Baltimore and Kathy Bassler of Chicago. and six grandchildren. A previous marriage to Dr. Doris Storms ended in divorce.
