Kaplan Lifetime Achievement Award honors School’s treasured faculty member
| January 06, 2010 | |
Dr. Berton Kaplan
As a public health educator and researcher, Bert Kaplan, PhD, has enriched not only the studies, but also the lives of students and colleagues throughout the world. Now, his many contributions are remembered annually through an award established in his honor by Duke University’s Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health. The Berton H. Kaplan Lifetime Achievement Award is to be presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Spirituality, Theology and Health to a scholar who has shown distinguished service in the fields of religion and health.
Kaplan, professor emeritus of epidemiology at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, received the Duke Center’s inaugural lifetime achievement award in 2008. The first Kaplan award was presented in 2009 to David Moberg, PhD, professor emeritus of sociology at Marquette University, who will give the Kaplan Lecture at the Society’s meeting in June 2010.
Keith G. Meador, MD, ThM, MPH, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University and co-director of the Center, has collaborated with Kaplan for many years.
“Bert has provided foundational work and discerning thoughtfulness in the epidemiological study of social and cultural dimensions of behavior and health while mentoring many of us in the particular study of religion and health,” Meador said.”More than anything, he has been a wise friend and counselor in the academic journey – truly a gift to many.”
Kaplan, associate faculty scholar at the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life, received his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1965-1966, he received a fellowship for postdoctoral training in social psychiatry at Cornell University under the direction of Alexander Leighton, MD, whose work in psychiatric epidemiology was seminal in Kaplan’s career. Kaplan actively served on the UNC public health faculty from 1960 until 1999. In the year of his retirement, he was presented with the UNC General Alumni Association’s Faculty Service Award. Established in 1990, the award honors faculty members who have performed outstanding service for the University or the alumni association.
At UNC, he also directed the UNC Russell Sage Law and Society Seminar Program and the training program, “Psychosocial Factors in Mental Health and Disease,” and was founder and chair of the Carolina Seminar on Forgiveness and Health.
As professor emeritus, Kaplan’s research interests continue to focus on various aspects of community as they affect health, including social psychiatry and epidemiology, cardiovascular epidemiology, clinical uses of social psychiatry, the study of social health, and religion and depression.
His students and colleagues remember Kaplan as one true to his own teachings.
“In addition to [Bert’s] many achievements in advancing research on spirituality, his own spirituality comes through in all his relationships with family, friends, students and associates,” says Vic Schoenbach, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology at UNC and former student of Kaplan’s. “For example, as a professor, he was concerned for the physical, psychological and social health of his students as well as their academic success.”
Dan Blazer, MD, PhD, J.P. Gibbons Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center, is a longtime colleague, co-author and friend.
“Bert Kaplan is a most welcome remnant of a time when empirical scholars also were most interested in context,” Blazer said.
“In other words, he does not believe that identifying a connection between a risk factor and a disease outcome was enough. He has wanted not only to understand the mechanisms but also to understand the environment in which that connection was found, especially the social environment. Given those interests, Bert is one of the most widely read and conversant scholars that I have had the privilege to know. The breadth of his knowledge and his empathy rightly led to his identification by the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke to honor him. My greatest honor is that I can count him a most close friend.”
The Society for Spirituality, Theology and Health was established to support scholarship, research and academic development in the field of spirituality and health. Its international membership includes about 280 academic researchers, clinicians and others interested in spirituality and health.
The Duke Center was founded in 2007 to promote scholarship and research about the impact of spirituality, beliefs and the practice of caring upon individual and community health.
UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.
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