John Wyon

Wyon was one of the pioneers in the field of population science and had a 35-year career at HSPH, retiring in 1988 as a senior lecturer in the Department of Population and International Health. A British missionary doctor fluent in Hindi, Wyon worked in rural India prior to coming to HSPH in 1951 to work with Clarence Gamble, a long-time advocate for family planning and founder of the Pathfinder Fund (now Pathfinder International), a non-profit organization that supports family planning efforts and reproductive health services. Gamble was a grandson of the co-founder of Procter & Gamble; a faculty member at Harvard Medical School; and a research associate at HSPH. He provided the support for Wyon to earn his MPH at HSPH.

Together, Wyon; Gamble; John Gordon, chair of the Department of Epidemiology from 1946 to 1958; and Carl Taylor, MPH ’51, DPh ’53, who became an HSPH faculty member and later head of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Christian Medical College in Punjab, helped establish one of the first longitudinal investigations in population science–the 1953 India-Harvard-Ludhiana study, better known as the Khanna Study. Wyon served as Field Director for the Khanna Study after receiving his MPH. He later wrote with Gordon a book considered to be a classic in the field–The Khanna Study: Population Problems in the Rural Punjab.

In their collaboration, Wyon and Gordon worked to test the possibility of changing the birth rates in the rural villages of Punjab, India, through the use of birth control. This was the start of what would eventually become known as community-based health care–strong outreach services, down to the household level, for basic health and family planning services in rural areas without hospitals. Wyon and Gordon have since been credited with contributing to the progress that has been made in Bangladesh in reducing childhood mortality and in reducing fertility.

In 2002, Wyon co-edited Community-Based Health Care: Lessons From Bangladesh to Boston, an anthology of the efforts of public health practitioners to bring primary health care to both rural and urban communities around the world. Wyon stayed close to community-based projects throughout his career, consulting in India, Sri Lanka, and Bolivia; with Henry Perry and Andean Rural Health Care; and with Oxfam America.

In 1943, as a conscientious objector to military service, Wyon joined a Quaker organization and served as the only Western qualified doctor in the Province of Tigre in Ethiopia, working at a government-run hospital that had 100 beds and six outpatient clinics for a community of approximately one million people. He developed a desire to practice medicine effectively among impoverished and illiterate populations with no access to health care.

As a senior lecturer at HSPH, Wyon developed the Student Project Design Seminar. Students were responsible for identifying a community and a public health problem and then reporting to the seminar on how the problem could be addressed. Many went on to implement their projects.

Wyon was an active member of the American Public Health Association (APHA) and Management Sciences for Health (publisher of Community-Based Health Care, in collaboration with HSPH). In 1995, he received the Alumni Award of Merit from HSPH and the Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in International Health from the APHA.

He leaves his wife Joan (Litchard Kittredge) Wyon, daughter Rachel M. of Cambridge, Thomas C. of Somerville and the late Mary Wyon. He leaves grandchildren; Hilary and Mario Wyon, daughter-in-law, Karen, three step-children, four step-grandchildren and one great-grandchild. His first wife, Elizabeth, died in 1989. His brother Peter Wyon of Yorkshire, England, and numerous nieces and nephews survive him.

Wyon was honored at HSPH with a moment of silence during Alumni Weekend on June 11. Services will be held at Trinity Church in Copley Square on Saturday, June 26, at 1:30 p.m. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Trinity Church or to HSPH.