Dear Alumni and Friends,
We lost a pioneering public health leader, mentor, and colleague Saturday, when Arthur Bushel, DDS, MPH, passed away at age 99.
An early leader in dental public health, Art launched one of the first campaigns to prevent cavities by fluoridating the New York City water supply. At the School, Art chaired the Department of Health Services Administration from 1969 to 1983, when it was renamed Health Policy and Management. His many lasting contributions to the School include helping to launch the Master of Health Science degree program and chairing the Committee on Human Volunteers (later the Human Subjects Committee).
He embodied what we strive to teach our students: how to lead with the evidence to develop and then implement programs and policies that will protect the health of millions of people and advance health equity. We were fortunate to have had Art at the School to teach the many lessons he learned firsthand on the front lines of public health.
While serving as a dental officer during World War II, Art saw that many Army recruits lacked the most basic dental care: 10% of them didn't meet the requirement to have two opposing teeth. This experience compelled Art to do more to ensure access to good dental services for everyone.
While overseeing the Bureau of Dental Health in the New York State Health Department in the late 1940s, Art launched a mobile dental clinic in a trailer that traveled across the state. He worked with Dr. David Ast on a pioneering fluoride study that compared the health and dental records of residents of two New York towns, showing that the town with fluoridated water had much lower rates of cavities among its children.
During his time with the City of New York from 1954 to 1969, Art helped build the evidence base for fluoridation. He also collaborated closely with New York City health commissioner Leona Baumgartner to modernize the city’s public health programs. As chief of the Bureau of Dental Health from 1955 to 1965, he supervised the city’s 115 free pediatric dental clinics. He rose to become assistant commissioner of health and later first deputy commissioner.
Art’s two proudest accomplishments with the city were fluoridating the water supply in 1964 and creating the Public Health Research Institute of the City of New York, a mini-NIH that produced valuable studies on major issues such asbestosis, methadone treatment, and the measles vaccine. Bushel told an interviewer, “Leona gave me the assignment of selling fluoridation to the city, so I had a big political career.”
When Art joined Johns Hopkins in 1969 as chair of Health Services Administration, he brought fresh-from-the-field perspective to education programs.
Through the 1970s, Art directed the School’s Comprehensive Health Planning Program, in which faculty from three departments taught students how to determine government health workforce and infrastructure needs. Using these principles, health ministries and agencies could plan and create policies designed to achieve the best health outcomes for the lowest cost.
With Assistant Dean Harvey Fischman, Art helped develop in the 1970s the department-based Master of Health Science program, which provided a more flexible alternative to the Schoolwide Master of Public Health degree.
Art was born in Brooklyn, New York, and followed his father into dentistry. He graduated from Columbia University School of Dentistry in 1943 and returned after the war to Columbia to earn an MPH in 1947.
A leader in dentistry and public health, Art led an effort to convince the American Dental Association to end racially discriminatory membership policies in 1965. He served as president of the American Board of Dental Public Health and as chair of the American Public Health Association Governing Board’s executive committee in 1978.
We offer our deepest condolences to Art’s family, friends, and colleagues. He will be missed but always remembered as one of the School’s true public health heroes.
With great appreciation for a life well lived,
Ellen
Ellen J. MacKenzie, PhD ’79, ScM ’75
Dean
Bloomberg Distinguished Professor
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
615 North Wolfe Street
Baltimore, MD 21205
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