Axelrod, Solomon J. (Solomon Jacob), 1912-1987

Public health physician, specialist in public health economics, professor in the University of Michigan School of Public Health, director of its Bureau of Public Health Economics, and chairman of the Department of Medical Care Organization.

Solomon Jacob Axelrod was born in Gloversville, New York on September 25, 1912. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1934 and received his MD from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1938. After his internship at the Indigents Clinic of Philadelphia General Hospital, Axelrod became a research fellow in venereal disease control at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1941 Axelrod became a medical officer for the Tennessee State Department of Health where he worked on controlling venereal disease and tuberculosis. From 1943 to 1949 Axelrod worked as a commissioned officer in the United States Public Health Service (PHS), first as a venereal disease control officer, then in the migrant labor health program, and lastly as a rural health consultant. In this latter position he was assigned to the State of Michigan, where he used the occasion to continue his studies at the University of Michigan. Axelrod completed his master's degree in public health in 1948 and then went on to become Medical Director of the Michigan Rapid Treatment Center located in Ann Arbor.

The development of antibiotics to treat syphilis about this time soon made rapid treatment centers obsolete, so Axelrod faced reassignment by the PHS. He had to make a decision in 1949 when he was requested to return to Washington D.C. to help implement the national health insurance program which was expected to be enacted under the Truman Administration. Nathan Sinai, Director of the Bureau of Public Health Economics at UM, convinced Axelrod to resign his commission in PHS and become a faculty member of the UM School of Public Health, an affiliation he maintained until his retirement in 1977.

In 1959 Axelrod succeeded Sinai as Director of the Bureau of Public Health Economics, and from 1965 to 1970 he served as the first Chairman of UM's Department of Medical Care Organization, a unit that Axelrod had himself founded.

Throughout his distinguished career, Axelrod held various appointments with local, state, national, and international organizations, including the Governor's Public Health Study Commission (Michigan), the Pan American Health Organization, the National Institute of Rehabilitation, and the American Public Health Association. In addition, Axelrod worked with the United Auto Workers to promote the establishment of health maintenance organizations, and was a founding member of the Committee for National Health Insurance.

In 1978, Axelrod retired from the University but continued to be active professionally. Locally, he helped establish a Medicare counseling program within the Washtenaw County Council on Aging. Among his other projects was his work to devise and implement a program to restrain health care costs in Michigan. He also worked with Comprehensive Health Services of Detroit, a health maintenance organization serving the largely low income population of the inner city.

Solomon Axelrod died September 21, 1987.