Samuel M. Wishik, professor emeritus at the Columbia School of Public Health, who was instrumental in creating family planning and health programs worldwide, died Feb. 19 in San Diego. He was 89 and had resided in La Jolla since his retirement from Columbia 18 years ago.

Having conducted public health research in 65 countries by the time he reached emeritus status in 1976, Wishik's influence affected the family lives of the poorest third world villages and the genesis of the global information network. "His contributions to the fields of children's and women's health are known nationally and internationally," said SPH Dean Allan Rosenfield.

Born in Flushing, Queens, Wishik graduated from high school at 16 and earned a bachelor's degree from Columbia College and a medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the following six years. Following an internship, pediatric residency, and clinical work at hospitals in New Jersey, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, Wishik joined the New York City Department of Health, eventually becoming director of the Bureau of Child Health.

Jean Pakter, a lecturer in SPH's division of population and family health and former director of the Bureau of Maternal Services and Family Planning at the New York City Department of Health, calls Wishik her "inspiration and stimulus for entering the public health field." In 1949, Wishik appointed Pakter, then a pediatrician in private practice, to a consultant post in the Department of Health's Maternity and Newborn Division. They worked together for two years, until Wishik accepted an appointment as founding chairman of the department of maternal and child health at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health. His work in Pittsburgh included close collaborations with Jonas Salk and Benjamin Spock, P&S '29.

Wishik's focus expanded to international health issues just after World War II, when he conducted a children's health survey of the Philippines for the State Department. In the mid-1960s, he worked as an advisor on population and family planning to the government of Pakistan, and technical coordinator of the National Research Institute of Family Planning in Karachi. While in Pakistan, he developed the "couple-year of protection index," a measurement of contraceptive use by couples over time. According to Martin Gorosh, a clinical professor of public health at Columbia and a long-time Wishik associate, the index continues to be used to this day and is still being refined by family planning researchers.

Wishik also contributed to the collective consciousness of family health by assembling a vast library of what Gorosh terms "fugitive literature"--unpublished material like technical manuals and trip reports that are the nuts and bolts of professional journal articles.

Wishik's collection of both conventional journal publications and exhaustive background laid the foundation for POPLINE, the world's only comprehensive international database for population, family planning, and related issues, launched in 1972 at George Washington University.

Wishik's published work includes "How To Help Your Handicapped Child," a pamphlet that was translated into French, Spanish, Arabic and Urdu, as well as a training handbook for family planning workers (translated into 17 languages) a thesaurus of international family planning terminology, and the book Feeding Your Child (Doubleday, 1955).

Returning to Columbia in 1967, Wishik assembled the program development and evaluation division at the International Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction in the School of Public Health. Friends and colleagues noted his exemplary teaching skills, particularly in one-to-one encounters, and his "willingness to bet on young people and to back them" in their pursuit of international health and family planning careers.

At his death, Wishik was a consultant for the Navy in its medical studies of Persian Gulf War veterans and was on the faculties of San Diego State University and UC-San Diego. He is survived by his wife, Belle Granich; a son, Anton, of Port Angeles, WA; two daughters, Laura Wishik of Seattle and Heather Wishik of Boston; two stepdaughters, Jane Hoffman of Los Alamos, NM, and Judith Goode of Philadelphia; a brother, Julian Wishik of Montgomery, AL; 10 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren.

Columbia University Record -- March 8, 1996 -- Vol. 21, No. 19