Leader in Medicine Will Be Greatly Missed
The OSMA is sad to announce that Edward N. Brandt, Jr., MD, a long-time friend and colleague, passed away at his home, Saturday, August 25, 2007 after a brief illness. He was 74. Until recently, Dr. Brandt was teaching as a Regent’s Professor Emeritus in Health Administration and Policy at the OU College of Public Health. However, he was best known for overseeing and coordinating the nation’s response to the first cases of what became known as HIV, when he was Assistant Secretary of Health during the Reagan administration.
Born in Oklahoma City in 1933, Dr. Brandt had never given a health career a second thought. Because his father, Ed Senior, had worked for the local newspaper, he enrolled in 1950 at OU as a journalism major. He took a liking to college and soon switched his major to mathematics. After receiving a B.S. in math from OU in 1954, he and his wife Pat, whom he married in August of 1953, moved to Stillwater where at Oklahoma A & M he spent a year earning a master’s degree in Math. Due to the influence from his father-in law, a Marietta physician, Dr. Brandt decided to go to medical school and intended to go into practice with him in Marietta. However, he was influenced in a new direction which was the ground floor of a new discipline: the application of computers to medicine and to medical education. After receiving his M.D. in 1960, Dr. Brandt obtained his Ph.D. in biostatistics and epidemiology.
A turning point in Brandt’s career occurred in 1967 when he became Assistant to OU’s Vice President for Medical Affairs. Shortly thereafter, Brandt was named Associate Dean of the medical school. However, deciding that the “grass was greener” in Texas, he moved to become Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He was appointed Dean of the Texas Medical school in 1974 and was appointed Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs in 1977. There he and Pat raised their three sons, Patrick, Ed III and Rex.
In 1981, President Reagan nominated Brandt to serve as Assistant Secretary of Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. During that time, a baffling, unknown disease began to appear. With the help of other epidemiologists, Brandt's team was able to determine the nature of the disease and how it spread amid public fear of easy transmission. Brandt was praised by patient advocacy groups and won national acclaim for his compassionate handling of the government's response to the epidemic. Dr. Brandt served out his position through Ronald Reagan’s first term.
Later in 1985, Brandt accepted an offer to become Chancellor at the University of Maryland’s Baltimore Campus where he stayed until 1989, when he began his appointment as Executive Dean at the OU College of Medicine. He spent a little over three intense years, pursuing the goals of attracting funding and attention for the University. In August of 1992, Brandt resigned as Dean to become the first Director for the Center for Health Policy where he continued until his “retirement”. Actually Dr. Brandt served on so many boards, task forces and committees that these mainly voluntary positions practically constituted a full-time job. In his role with organized medicine, He served on numerous Council and Committees for the Oklahoma County Medical Society (OCMS), the Oklahoma State Medical Association (OSMA) and the American Medical Association (AMA), including service as an Associate Editor on the OSMA Journal Board where he contributed many articles for publication. Dr. Brandt also spent numerous hours representing physicians and their patients at the state legislature when he served as Chair of the OSMA’s Council on State Legislation and Regulation from 1994 until 2006, when he was named Chair Emeritus. Dr. Brandt’s life touched many, many individuals and he will be greatly missed.
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