The New York Times - October 16, 2008
H. Roger Segelken

The cause was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., said his son, Paul Rosenfield.

Dr. Rosenfield, who learned he had A.L.S. in 2005, also had another progressive disease, myasthenia gravis, but he continued to work until his retirement in June 2008, after 22 years as dean of the school. He worked for more than four decades on women's reproductive health and human rights, innovative family planning studies and strategies to address maternal deaths because of AIDS in developing countries. Perhaps his most notable effort was the Mother-to-Child Transmission program, which has so far brought comprehensive health care to more than 500,000 women and infants.

When Columbia University's president, Lee C. Bollinger, announced in 2006 that the public health school's main building on West 168th Street would be named for Dr. Rosenfield, he said, "Over the last three decades at Columbia, Allan has not only inspired and trained generations of public health leaders, he has helped define what a school of public health should be."

Among the global initiatives organized from the school during Dr. Rosenfield's tenure were the $50 million Averting Maternal Death and Disability Program (from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) and the International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs (with $125 million from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief).

Dr. Rosenfield was born April 28, 1933, in Brookline, Mass. He received his B.A. in biochemistry from Harvard College in 1955 and his M.D. from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1959.

In the 1960s, before H.I.V./AIDS became a global concern, Dr. Rosenfield worked in Thailand with the Population Council, a nonprofit group, advising the Thai ministry of public health on reproductive, maternal and child health issues - an effort he later recognized as the turning point of his career.

At a time when the annual population growth rate in Thailand was 3.3 percent and the country faced a severe shortage of physicians, Dr. Rosenfield helped develop a national family planning program that trained auxiliary midwives to prescribe birth control. By 2000, Thailand's population growth rate had dropped to 0.8 percent a year.

In 1975, Dr. Rosenfield joined the Columbia faculty as a professor of public health and obstetrics and gynecology, as well as director of the school's new Center for Population and Family Health. He ordered a dual focus - the global outreach that the public-health school would become known for, and efforts in Columbia's immediate neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, where community-based programs included the Young Adult Clinic for adolescent women, the Young Men's Clinic and clinics in intermediate and high schools.

Dr. Rosenfield worked, with other members of the Columbia faculty, in the neighborhood clinics through 1986, when he was appointed dean of the Mailman School and administrative and fund-raising duties became more time-consuming.

The clinical experience, however, had provided insight to problems on a global scale, and in 1985 he published, with Deborah Maine, a call to action for maternal and child health, known in the field as MCH, in The Lancet. The article, "Maternal Mortality - A Neglected Tragedy: Where is the M in MCH?" drew attention to the many third-world women who died in pregnancy and childbirth. He said that the crisis in women's health was worsening, and that providers were focusing on children at the expense of women and families. As a result, international health groups and policy makers began to focus on the universal shortage of maternal health care, including access to emergency obstetric care. Dr. Rosenfield used the support of Gates Foundation to establish more than 85 "safe motherhood" initiatives in 50 countries around the world.

Speaking out at the World AIDS Conference in 2000 in Durban, South Africa, Dr. Rosenfield again demanded that attention be paid to maternal care. With the support of nine private foundations, he started the MTCT-Plus Initiative to address mother-to-child transmission of the disease. Dr. Rosenfield was national chairman of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 1985 to 1986 and was chairman of the Program Board of the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

He is survived by his wife, Clare, of Hartsdale; a son, Paul, of Riverdale, N.Y.; a brother, Jim, of Manhattan; a daughter, Jill Baker of Brookline; and five grandchildren.

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