(July 7, 1909-June 14, 1990). A native of Indianapolis, Lewis Robbins graduated from in 1935 and received a master’s degree in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University in 1938. Robbins began his career at and the Indiana State Board of Health. In 1941, he joined the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) where he was one of the initiators of the landmark Framingham Study, linking heart disease and smoking.
During the 1950s, he served as a health officer in the international health programs of the United States in Indochina, Southeast Asia, the Near East, and Africa. In 1950, he was one of the first Americans who went to Vietnam, where he fought malaria and other contagious diseases in the face of guerilla warfare.
U.S. Surgeon General appointed Robbins the first chief of cancer control of the USPHS (1957-1965). Writing on behalf of Burney, he coauthored “Smoking and Lung Cancer: A Statement of the Public Health Service,” which appeared in the (JAMA) as a “Special Article” on November 27, 1959.
When he accepted this text for publication in JAMA, Burney became the first surgeon general to make a lengthy strong written warning about the connection between smoking and lung cancer. It would remain the official position of the USPHS until Burney’s successor, Luther Terry, accepted the report of the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health in 1964.
As the first USPHS chief of cancer control, Robbins also played a key role in the development of mammography for the control of breast cancer, the flexible proctosigmoidoscope for colon-rectal cancer, and the Pap smear for cervical cancer.
Throughout his career, Robbins’ primary concern was the prevention of disease and injury. Using data from prospective epidemiological studies like Framingham, Robbins developed a diagnostic tool, the Health Risk Appraisal (HRA), to identify the health risks linked to various individual lifestyles. By identifying these lifestyle problems through the HRA, Robbins hoped in many cases to avert the onset of disease and to extend useful life expectancy. The HRA is widely used in preventive medicine.
Robbins received a commendation medal for his contributions to cancer control in 1963. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health also recognizes him as one of its “Heroes of Public Health”.
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