Colin W McCord

Coke McCord, Chest Surgeon Who Joined the Vanguard of International Social Medicine, Dies At 94

Colin McCord, a New York surgeon who fought health disparities across the world, died March 11 at his home in Oxford, England of natural causes. He was 94.

Known by all by the nickname Coke, Dr. McCord was heart surgeon by training who went on to make significant contributions in the fields of international and public health, working from 1971 onward in rural India and Bangladesh, Mozambique, New York City and Tanzania. The impacts of his work with a wide range of colleagues included development of safe surgical replacements of diseased heart valves, development and implementation of rural health care models that integrated public health interventions with clinical treatment, deployment of paraprofessional women's health workers to deliver reproductive health services to poor women in Bangladesh, training and deployment of paraprofessional surgical technicians in rural Africa where there are few professional surgeons, and the ban on indoor smoking in New York City.

While he spent most of his time in hands-on medical work, he received widest public notice with the publication of "Excess Mortality in Harlem," in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1990. The paper showed that men in Harlem had a lower life expectancy than existed at that time for males in Bangladesh turning "a domestic embarrassment into an international disgrace," as one commentator noted.

A recipient of various professional awards, Dr. McCord was most proud of being named "Trabalhador de Vanguarda" in 1983 at the fourth party congress of Frelimo, the party ruling in Mozambique. In 1993, he was also named as one of the inaugural recipients of Williams College's Bicentennial medal for Distinguished Achievement.

Colin Wallace Miller was born on May 15, 1928 in Chicago, Ill. to Colin Miller, a journalist, and George Lyle Mickleberry. His parents' marriage soon dissolved and the child was raised by maternal grandparents until his mother married again, to A. King McCord, a corporate lawyer and businessman. He chose to take his adoptive father's surname as a young man, before enlisting in the U.S. Army at the end of World War II. He married Susan Lewis Hobson, an educator, in July 1954. She died in 2002. In 2003 he married Susanne Ehrhardt Chowdhury, a physician, international development worker and poet. They settled in Oxford.

In addition to Susanne Chowdhury, survivors include two daughters, Mary McCord and Anne McCord Wrublewski, a son, Andy McCord, two sons-in-law, Alex Okun and Ray Wrublewski, and a daughter-in-law, Emily Singer, all of New York City; a sister, Leslie Danforth of Ligonier, Pa.; a step-daughter Bristi Chowdhury of Oxford; and four grandchildren, Ada and Evan Okun and Rebecca and Elizabeth McCord.

A celebration of his life will be held on Saturday, May 13, 2023 at1:30 pm at theNew York Academy of Medicine -1216 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10029.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the Coke McCord Scholarship Fund at Lehman College. Contributions can be made online at tinyurl.com/CokeMcCordFund or https://secure.qgiv.com/for/lehmancollege/restriction/Student+Scholarships/subrestriction/The+Coke+McCord+Scholarship+Fund