Professor Emeritus S. Len Syme, HRA's Co-Principal Investigator, was awarded the Wade Hampton Frost Lectureship, one of the most prestigious awards in the field of epidemiology. Dr. Syme received the award on November 8 at APHA's annual meeting in Denver. As part of the award, he presented a lecture, "Causal Models in Epidemiology: The Need for Some New Thinking."

The award is granted to a person who has made significant contributions to major public health issues by the application of epidemiologic methods. Syme was selected for "opening a new field of research dealing with the social determinants of disease and for training a new generation of scholars who are now working on this issue."

For most of his 40 years at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, Syme has conducted research on risk factors for heart disease, with a major focus on psychosocial risk factors such as job stress, social support, and poverty. As part of this research, he has studied San Francisco bus drivers, civil servants in London, and Japanese living in Japan, Hawaii, and San Francisco. He has also trained many luminaries in the field of social epidemiology.