Joe D. Wray

1926 - 2006

Dr. Joe David Wray, a respected authority in international maternal and child health, died at his home in Medford, NJ, on March 9. Dr. Wray worked to alleviate malnutrition, promote family planning, and train medical students in the developing world in rural pediatric healthcare.

In the 1950s, he developed the graphic method of identifying and classifying the severity of malnutrition in children, which is still in use today. His research demonstrated to international agencies that interventions in primary healthcare and nutrition were affordable and could reduce childhood mortality. Other research convinced health personnel and policymakers that family planning has health as well as financial benefits. In the late 1970s, Dr. Wray's work for UNICEF/WHO on infant feeding helped persuade policymakers that breast feeding prevents mortality in Third World infants and merited support.

Dr. Wray was born in Conway, Arkansas. He served in a Navy V-12 Unit at Emory University during World War II, and subsequently received his BA (1947) and MD (1952) from Stanford University. He completed his pediatric training at Yale University's School of Medicine (1954-56). In 1956, Dr. Wray became the first chief resident at Hacettepe Children's Hospital in Ankara, Turkey. In 1961, he accepted an assignment with a Rockefeller Foundation program to improve medical education in developing countries and spent the next five years at Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia, as Visiting Professor of Pediatrics, developing teaching activities to prepare graduates for rural pediatric healthcare. In 1966, he returned to the United States to obtain an MPH at the University of North Carolina.

In 1967, Dr. Wray continued his work with the Rockefeller Foundation at the Ramathibodi Hospital of Mahidol University in Thailand, where he helped develop a program similar to the one in Colombia. Today, medical schools in Southeast Asia model programs on the one Dr. Wray and his colleagues created.

Dr. Wray returned to the U.S. in 1974 as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. He then taught at the Harvard School of Public Health (1975-1981), serving as Head of the Department of Population Sciences and Director of the Office of International Health and teaching courses in international, maternal, and child health. He later became a Professor of Clinical Public Health at the Center for Population and Family Health of Columbia University's School of Public Health (1981-1991) where he taught and participated in international operations research and training activities. Dr. Wray also helped to establish research programs on the prevention of maternal mortality in West Africa. In addition, He was awarded a Dr. Med. (Honoris Causa) from Hacettepe University in 1983.

In retirement, Dr. Wray was a Professor Emeritus at the Columbia School of Public Health and an international consultant, evaluating child survival and operations research projects, curriculum planning, and assessing the nutritional status of children in 17 countries.

He is survived by his wife, Beth, five children, and eight grandchildren.

Allan Rosenfield, MD
Dean
Mailman School of Public Health
Columbia University