Halbert L. Dunn, M.D. (1896–1975) was the leading figure in establishing a national vital statistics system in the United States and is known as the "father of the wellness movement".

Early life

Born in New Paris, Ohio, he attended the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

where he earned his M.D. in 1922 and his Ph.D. in 1923. He served as an assistant in medicine at Presbyterian Hospital of

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1923-1924 and as fellow in medicine at the

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(1924–1925).

Work in statistics

In 1929, he was the first biostatistician hired by the

and established its computer coding system for deriving

medical statistics Medical statistics deals with applications of statistics to medicine and the health sciences, including epidemiology, public health, forensic medicine, and clinical research. Medical statistics has been a recognized branch of statistics in the U ...

. He was Chief of the National Office of Vital Statistics from 1935 through 1960, first as part of the

Bureau of the Census The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of the ...

and later under the

Department of Health, Education and Welfare The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is ...

, where it eventually became the

National Center for Health Statistics The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is a U.S. government agency that provides statistical information to guide actions and policies to improve the public health of the American people. It is a unit of the Centers for Disease Control ...

in 1960. In his final year with the

U.S. Public Health Service The United States Public Health Service (USPHS or PHS) is a collection of agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services concerned with public health, containing nine out of the department's twelve operating divisions. The Assistant ...

he was Assistant Surgeon General for aging. He was one of the founders of the National Association for Public Health Statistics and Information Systems (NAPHSIS) and of the Inter-American Statistics Institute (IASI). He was Secretary General of the IASI from 1941 to 1952. The Halbert L. Dunn Award, named in his honor, has been presented since 1981 by NAPHSIS in recognition of outstanding and lasting contributions to the field of vital and health statistics.

Wellness

Dunn is known as the "father" of the wellness movement. He distinguished between good health—not being ill—and what he termed high-level wellness, which he defined as "a condition of change in which the individual moves forward, climbing toward a higher potential of functioning". He introduced the concept in a series of twenty-nine lectures at the Unitarian Church in

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in the late 1950s, which provided the basis for his book, ''High Level Wellness'', published in 1961. The book was reissued in a number of editions but did not have a great deal of immediate impact. It did, however, come into the hands of a number of the future leaders of the wellness and

holistic health Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or evidence from clinical trials. Complementary medicine (CM), complementary and alt ...

movement that bloomed more than a decade later, such as Don B. Ardell, Robert Russell, John Travis, and Elizabeth Neilson. Four events in the mid-1970s broadened the impact of Dunn's ideas. First, John Travis opened the first US wellness center (Mill Valley, CA, 1975). This center and other organizations were then described in Don Ardell's 1977 book, using Dunn's title (giving Dunn due credit for his origination of the title and concept). Then Elizabeth Neilson founded the journal ''Health Values: Achieving High-Level Wellness'' (renamed the ''American Journal of Health Promotion'' in 1996), which was dedicated to Dunn and reprinted one of his papers in its first edition. Lastly, the publisher of ''Health Values'', Charles B. Slack, Inc., published a reprint edition of Dunn's ''High-Level Wellness'' that achieved a wider distribution and impact.

References

Sources

* Ardell, D. B. (1977). High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs and Disease. Emmaus, PA: Rodale. * Ardell, D. B. (Dec. 29, 2000). A (very) brief history of the wellness concept. Wellness in the Headlines (Don's Report to the World)

* Dunn, H.L. (1961). High-Level Wellness. Arlington, VA: Beatty Press. * Dunn, H.L. (1977). High Level Wellness. Thorofare, NJ: Charles, B. Slack. * Dunn, H.L. (1977). What High Level Wellness Means. Health Values, 1(1), 9-16. * Neilson, E. A. (1988). Health Values: Achieving high level wellness—Origin, philosophy, purpose. Health Values, 12(3):3-5. * Rice, S. A. (1967). Conception, gestation and birth of the IASI. The American Statistician, 21(3), 15-19 * Travis, J. W., and Ryan, R. S. (1981, 1988, 2004) Wellness Workbook, Ten Speed Press/Celestial Arts {{DEFAULTSORT:Dunn, Halbert L. 1896 births 1975 deaths People from New Paris, Ohio American statisticians University of Minnesota Medical School alumni American bioinformaticians Biostatisticians American health educators Fellows of the American Statistical Association