- Halbert L. Dunn
Halbert L. Dunn, M.D. (1896-1975) was the leading figure in establishing a national
vital statistics system in the United States and is known as the "father of thewellness movement". Born inNew Paris, Ohio , he attended theUniversity of Minnesota where he earned his M.D. in 1922 and his Ph.D. in 1923. He served as an assistant in medicine atPresbyterian Hospital ofNew York City 1923-1924 and as fellow in medicine at theMayo Clinic inRochester, Minnesota (1924-1925).In 1929, he was the first biostatistician hired by the
Mayo Clinic and established its computer coding system for derivingmedical statistics . He was Chief of the National Office of Vital Statistics from 1935 through 1960, first as part of the Bureau of the Census and later under theDepartment of Health, Education and Welfare , where it eventually became theNational Center for Health Statistics in 1960. In his final year with theU.S. Public Health Service he was Assistant Surgeon General for aging.He was one of the founders of the National Association for Public Health Statistics and Information Systems (NAPHSIS) and of the Inter-American Statistics Institute (IASI). He was Secretary General of the IASI from 1941 to 1952. The
Halbert L. Dunn Award , named in his honor, has been presented since 1981 by NAPHSIS in recognition of outstanding and lasting contributions to the field of vital and health statistics.Dr. Dunn introduced the concept of wellness (or
high level wellness ) in a series of thirteen lectures he gave at the Unitarian Church inArlington County, Virginia in the late 1950s. Those lectures provided the basis for his book, "High Level Wellness", which was published in 1961. The book was reissued in a number of editions but did not have a great deal of immediate impact. It did, however, come into the hands of a number of the future leaders of wellness andholistic health movement that bloomed more than a decade later, such asDon B. Ardell ,Robert Russell ,John Travis , andElizabeth Neilson .Three events in 1977 broadened the impact of Dunn's ideas. First, Don Ardell published a book using the Dunn's title and giving Dunn due credit for his origination of the title and concept. Second, Elizabeth Neilson founded the journal "Health Values: Achieving High Level Wellness" (renamed the "American Journal of Health Promotion" in 1996), which was dedicated to Dunn and reprinted one of his papers in its first edition. Third, the publisher of "Health Values", Charles B. Slack, Inc., published a reprint edition of Dunn's "High Level Wellness" that achieved a wider distribution and impact.
References
* Ardell, D. B. (1976). High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs and Disease. Emmaus, PA: Rodale.
* Ardell, D. B. (Dec. 29, 2000). A (very) brief history of the wellness concept. Wellness in the Headlines (Don's Report to the World). [http://www.seekwellness.com/wellness/reports/2000-12-29.htm]
* Dunn, H.L. (1961). High-Level Wellness. Arlington, VA: Beatty Press.
* Dunn, H.L. (1977). High Level Wellness. Thorofare, NJ: Charles, B. Slack.
* Dunn, H.L. (1977). What High Level Wellness Means. Health Values, 1(1), 9-16.
* Neilson, E. A. (1988). Health Values: Achieving high level wellness--Origin, philosophy, purpose. Health Values, 12(3):3-5.
* Rice, S. A. (1967). Conception, gestation and birth of the IASI. The American Statistician, 21(3), 15-19
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.