Massachusetts politician Tip O'Neill once said that all politics is local. One look at the résumés of this year's Alumni Award of Merit winners and a person would be tempted to say that all public health is global. Gretchen Berggren, S.M.'66, and her husband, Warren Berggren, M.P.H.'63, D.P.H.'67; Fred Sai, M.P.H.'60; and James Steele, M.P.H.'42, have had careers that have taken them around the world, working as government officials, university professors, and top executives for various service and health-related organizations. Their globe-trotting ways are partly a reflection of the international scope of many health problems; health issues tend to be reckless trespassers, heedless of boundaries. This year's merit winners also embody the altruistic impulses of public health to spread knowledge and work for the larger good. "I have believed firmly throughout my career that I should share my knowledge and expertise with my fellow man, be he American or citizen of the world," explains Steele.

The Alumni Award of Merit is the highest honor the School can bestow on a graduate. Presented annually, usually to three graduates, the award recognizes professional excellence, leadership, and commitment to the field of public health. Winners are selected by committee from nominations submitted by alumni worldwide.

For the first time, one of the recipients of the Alumni Award of Merit is a husband-and-wife team, partners who have worked together to improve the health of children across the Third World for close to four decades.

Throughout their careers, Gretchen and Warren Berggren have juggled academic appointments at Harvard with their work for UNICEF, Save the Children (Warren was the director of primary health care from 1984 to 1993), and World Relief. Gretchen was an assistant professor, and later a part-time lecturer, in the Department of Population Sciences from 1974 to 1993; Warren was an associate professor of tropical public health and population sciences from 1972 to 1981, and subsequently a visiting lecturer until last year.

Since 1967 the Berggrens have also spent a significant portion of their time at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles, Haiti. During their years there, over 200 Harvard public health and medical students have benefitted from their tutelage while working on field projects at the hospital. The program to bring Harvard students to Haiti was originally Tom Weller's and John Snyder's idea, according to the Berggrens. Weller is the former chair of the Department of Tropical Public Health and Snyder was dean of the School from 1954 to 1971. For their notable achievements in public health, the Berggrens have received numerous awards, including the International Health Award presented to them by Mother Teresa.

Gretchen and Warren met in medical school at the University of Nebraska in the 1950s. They had independently decided to become medical missionaries. Three years ahead of Gretchen in school, Warren began his medical service at a mission in what was then called the Belgian Congo while Gretchen finished her studies. They married in 1959 in Brussels, where Gretchen was studying tropical medicine at the Prince Leopold Institute. The next year, they set off for a mission in the Congo.

The Berggrens came to the School in 1962 on the recommendation of C. Everett Koop, the former U.S. surgeon general, who had done volunteer work with them in the Congo. "We'd been medical missionaries for the first five years of our careers and became convinced that preventive medicine was a better answer to the problems of the developing countries," explains Gretchen. The School offered Gretchen the opportunity to study under Hilton Salhanick, the chair of the Department of Population Sciences at the time. Meanwhile Warren earned his doctorate under Weller. Five years later the Berggrens left for the Albert Schweitzer Hospital.

During their first year, 650 children, most of them newborns, were treated for tetanus. The Berggrens began an aggressive tetanus immunization and education program. As a result, no one at the hospital has seen a newborn with tetanus from the district for almost a decade.

One of the many successful projects the Berggrens developed was an educational nutrition program that trains mothers to use local foods to correct dietary deficits. Mothers who have nourished their children well go on to share their positive habits and skills with other mothers in the same village. This community-based nutrition model has been duplicated throughout Haiti and in other countries. In his work with World Relief, Warren oversaw the nutrition program's implementation in Bangladesh while Gretchen supervised its establishment in Vietnam through Save the Children.

Fred Sai says he came to the School from his native Ghana over 25 years ago at the late Professor of Nutrition Jean Mayer's joking suggestion that "a year at Harvard would round off edges and open worldwide links." Mayer's advice was prescient. Sai has had a distinguished, multifaceted career in international health, nutrition, population, and family planning issues. He cofounded the Ghana Planned Parenthood Association and has helped shape the country's population policy over two decades.

Sai has also played a key role at several major international meetings and conferences in the fields of population, family planning, maternal health, and infant and young child feeding. Sai mentions the 1979 WHO/UNICEF Infant and Young Child Feeding Conference, the 1984 International Population Conference in Mexico, the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, and the 1987 Safe Motherhood Conference in Nairobi.

Sai says one of the most vivid recollections he has of his year at the School was getting a sense of the racial division in the United States. He had a long, frustrating search for a place to live. "It turned out I had two handicaps. I had a wife and three children. And we were black." Eventually, a black Baptist Church offered the Sai family accommodations. "The wives of the School's faculty and staff provided us with furniture, linen, and crockery--more than we ever needed. During our year there, our black friends felt upset about the number of white visitors we had. And many of the whites openly voiced their concern about the suitability of the community we were living in. By the end of the year, though, we noticed a relaxation in attitudes on both sides."

After graduating, Sai returned home, where he was promoted to assistant director of medical services for Ghana. Two years later, he became the first Africa region nutrition adviser to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

In 1966, Sai was appointed the first professor of preventive and social medicine at the University of Ghana Medical School. As a medical school professor, he started the Danfa Comprehensive Health and Family Planning Project, a collaborative effort with the UCLA School of Public Health that has become an internationally recognized center for primary health care research and training. Serving as director of medical services for Ghana from 1970 to 1972, Sai helped develop the nation's population policy.

As the International Planned Parenthood Federation's assistant secretary general for forward planning and international relations in the 1970s and then as a senior population adviser at the World Bank from 1985 to 1990, Sai pushed for increased population and family planning programs and services. He became the chair of the Ghana National Population Council in 1992 and served until 1997, combining these responsibilities with his post as president of the IPPF from 1989 to 1995.

Sai has written extensively on public health issues in Africa and has received numerous awards, including the United Nations' Population Award for Individual Achievement in 1993 and Thailand's Prince Mahidol Award in 1995.

Currently, Sai is back at his old teaching post, the University of Ghana Medical School, where he is an honorary professor of community health and a consultant to the World Bank on population and reproductive health issues in Africa. He continues to advise the Ghana Planned Parenthood Association, particularly on its programs for reproductive health and women, and serves on several boards in the population field including the Population Council and the Alan Guttmacher Institute.

When Alumni Council President-elect Joan Altekruse, M.P.H.'65, nominated James Steele for the Alumni Award of Merit, she called him the "founding father of public health veterinary science." It was an apt description of a 60-year career full of firsts.

Steele attended the School after earning a doctorate of veterinary medicine from Michigan State University. He had become interested in zoonotic diseases--diseases transmitted from animals to humans--after some of his vet school classmates fell ill with brucellosis. Cecil Drinker was the dean, and Steele credits Drinker with giving him the best advice he ever received. Steele says he was worried that having just a veterinary degree wouldn't lead to a successful career in public health, but Drinker told him to stick to veterinary work and "fly under one flag."

Steele was commissioned into the Public Health Service in 1943 and served for almost three decades. As chief of the veterinary public health division of the Communicable Disease Center in the late 1940s, he started the Public Health Service's first veterinary public health program. He also helped establish veterinary programs at the World Health Organization, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, and the Pan American Health Organization.

As chief veterinary officer and adviser to the surgeon general from 1950 to 1968 and assistant surgeon general for veterinary affairs from 1968 to 1971, Steele created the first formal rabies control program in the United States and a variety of other programs designed to stem zoonotic diseases. He also worked internationally, helping other countries duplicate his groundbreaking veterinary public health programs. Steele's research has been published in over 170 papers. He founded the CRC Handbook on Zoonoses and was editor-in-chief for each of its eight volumes. Among the many honors he has received are the Public Health Service's Meritorious Service Medal in 1963 and the American Public Health Association's prestigious Bronfman Award.

In 1971 Steele became a professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health where he taught courses in zoonoses and food hygiene and served as head of the Institute of Environmental Health Service. Steele became professor emeritus in 1983 but has continued to teach and write. In 1993 the University established a lecture and a chair in his name.

Steele recently celebrated his 85th birthday and is still tackling new challenges. His latest cause is food irradiation. Steele says that just as pasteurization has prevented much of the milk-borne diseases, food irradiation could prevent diseases caused by contaminated meat and poultry. He believes the process will also keep food fresher for longer. Steele is also greatly concerned about emerging diseases, as they mostly originate from animals.

The HSPH Alumni Association invites you to nominate a colleague or classmate for the 1999 Alumni Award of Merit. This year's nominations must be received by January 15, 1999. To receive a nomination form, call (617-351-0160), e-mail (alumni@sph.harvard.edu), or write (Alumni Relations Office at 116 Huntington Avenue, 9th Floor, Boston, MA 02116).