Silver, George A.

George Albert Silver was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 23, 1913. After receiving a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania (1934), Silver earned an M.D. from Jefferson Medical College (1938) and an M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University (1948). Silver taught at Johns Hopkins and Columbia University and served as chief of the Division of Social Medicine at Montefiore Hospital in New York City, before being named deputy assistant secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, where he served from 1966 through 1968. In 1969, Silver became a professor of public health in the Yale University School of Medicine, remaining until 1984, when he was named emeritus.

George Albert Silver's career focused on comprehensive health planning. His concern for the level and costs of medical care in the United States, particularly for children and the elderly, made him a leader in the fight for equitable health care and national health insurance. His interests expanded to expertise in international health, especially health policy in developing countries.

Silver was born in 1913 in Philadelphia, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1934, and received his M.D. from Jefferson Medical College in 1938. During World War II, Silver served as an officer with the 10thField Hospital in the European theater. After spending thirty months overseas in war-ravaged countries, he found his interests had shifted. Rather than return to private medical practice, he chose to dedicate his career to social medicine and public health. He served for a year as regional medical officer in the migrant labor program of the United States Department of Agriculture. Silver was then awarded a National Foundation Fellowship at Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene, and received his M.P.H. in 1947.

From 1947 to 1951, he was a health officer in Baltimore and assistant professor in local health administration in the School of Hygiene at Johns Hopkins. For the next fifteen years, he was chief of the Division of Social Medicine at Montefiore Hospital in New York City and in charge of the Montefiore Medical Group, the Home Care program, and the Family Health Maintenance Demonstration. He also served on the faculties of Columbia University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and the University of Michigan, teaching courses in public health administration and preventive medicine.

In March 1966, John Gardner, secretary of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, appointed Silver deputy secretary for health and scientific affairs, a position he retained until November 1968, when he joined Gardner at the National Urban Coalition, as an executive associate responsible for program planning in health matters. Silver began lecturing in public health at Yale University in 1965 and fours years later, he was made a professor of public health in the Yale School of Medicine.

While at Yale Silver wrote three of his four books: Family Medical Care: A Report on the Family Health Maintenance Demonstration (1963), Family Medical Care: A Design for Health Maintenance (1974), A Spy in the House of Medicine (1976), and Child Health, America's Future (1978). He also published numerous articles and lectured widely in the United States and abroad on social medicine, group practice, medical care organization, health policy, and health problems in the third world. He also served as a consultant in comprehensive health planning.

Silver served on the Advisory Health Council of the American Arbitration Association, chair of the Committee on International Health of the American Public Health Association, and a member of the board of directors of the Health Manpower Development Corporation and the Jewish Home for the Aged in New Haven. For the Milbank Memorial Fund, he was a member of the Technical Board and of the Commission for the Study of Higher Education in Public Health.

Silver's many honors include the Martha Eliot Award of the American Public Health Association in 1980, appointment as Senior Member of the National Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1983, and a Rockefeller Bellagio Study Award in 1983. He was named professor emeritus in 1984.

From the guide to the George A. Silver papers, 1946-1999, (Manuscripts and Archives)