Seniors World Chronicle: UK: John Pemberton, 97, was prominent in ...

John Pemberton, who has died aged 97, was an epidemiologist prominent in social and preventive medicine, and in the international dissemination of research in the field. His interest manifested itself early. In 1934, while still a medical student, he published a paper entitled Malnutrition in England. During the Jarrow marches of 1936, John met some of the marchers, helping to feed them and tending their feet. This experience, along with his contacts with Jerry Morris, Somerville Hastings (president of the Socialist Medical Association), Philip D'Arcy Hart and FAE Crew (later professor of social medicine at Edinburgh University) reinforced his belief in the importance of social and environmental factors in the aetiology of many diseases. This club, the International Corresponding Club, grew into the International Epidemiology Association (IEA), with a renowned journal, the International Journal of Epidemiology. John had a talent for setting up organisations. At the first meeting of the charitable CIBA foundation in London in 1956, he persuaded the British and Irish participants to accept the need for an independent scientific society, and thus created the Society for Social Medicine. A multidisciplinary academic society devoted to the study of health in its widest sense, it addressed the impact of factors such as income, environment and education on health. In 1967, while professor of social and preventive medicine at the University of Belfast, he persuaded the Geigy pharmaceutical company to sponsor the all-Ireland social medicine meeting. This meeting, which looks at health issues across national borders, continues to take place every two years. John was born in Romford, Essex. He attended Christ's Hospital school, Horsham, West Sussex, then studied medicine at University College Hospital (UCH), qualifying in 1936. In the same year he married Gwen Gray, with whom he would have three sons. After a house appointment at UCH, he was recruited by Sir John (later Lord) Boyd Orr to be in charge of a mobile nutritional research team which undertook a major survey in England and Scotland. This showed the effects of poverty on nutrition and was acknowledged by Lord Woolton, minister of food during the second world war, to be the foundation for the successful nutritional policy during the war. It has also been considered by some to be the major reason for the improvement in the health of the UK population after 1939.

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