Robert E. Shank
| Interviewer: | Paul G. Anderson |  |
| Date: | June 27, 1980 | |
| Identifier: | OH044 | |
| Approximate Length: | 130 min. | |
| Biographical Information: | Physician, 1914-2000. Shank received his medical degree from the Washington University School of Medicine in 1939. In 1948 Shank joined the faculty of his alma mater as the Danforth Professor of Medicine and head of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health. Under his leadership, the scope of the department broadened to include work in nutrition studies, rehabilitation, health maintenance organizations, biostatistics, applied physiology, and lipid research. Shank contributed to many national and international projects in the specialty of nutrition. He was particularly associated with the formation of standards for minimum dietary allowances by the National Research Council Food and Nutrition Board. He served as a consultant to the U.S. Public Health Service, the Interdepartmental Committee on Nutrition for National Defense, the Pan American Health Organization, and several food industry associations. Shank became professor emeritus in 1981. | |
| Summary: | Shank discusses his student years at the Washington University School of Medicine and his research with Dr. David Barr; his research at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research during World War II; and his postwar research at the Public Health Research Institute for the City of New York. The conversation then focuses on the major research focus of Shank’s career – nutritional studies. Shank relates his experiences conducting nutritional study research in Newfoundland; the study of nutrition during war and the necessity of providing proper nutrition to troops; public health surveys conducted overseas under the auspices of the Interdepartmental Committee on Nutrition for National Defense (ICNND); and his experiences as participant and consultant to the Public Health Service and the Indian Health Service. Shank comments on the challenge of improving nutrition standards in developing countries with steadily increasing populations and the role of the National Research Council and the Food Nutrition Board in the development of standards of recommended dietary allowances of nutrients. He also discusses the growth of the vitamin industry, nutrition in prepared and baby foods, and obesity. The discussion then covers the development of the WUSM Department of Preventive Medicine while Shank was its head – the Irene Walter Johnson Institute of Rehabilitation, the Medical Care Group under its initial director Gerald Perkoff, the division of biostatistics, Health Care Research, applied physiology, epidemiology, and lipid research. |
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