Anderson, Odin W.

Odin W. Anderson (1914–2003) is a worthy candidate for “the father of medical sociology.” After World War II, a few sociologists in the United States began to take interest in medical sociology (although the term had not yet been coined). In 1960, a section on the sociology of medicine was established within the American Sociological Association (ASA), and quickly it became one of the largest sections. Anderson was a member of the founding committee for this section and its second chair. In the following decades, other academic disciplines, including economics, political science, and operations research began to study health services, and philanthropic foundations and the federal government became interested in funding research on the health services industry, destined to become the largest industry in the nation. Anderson's career spanned these periods of significant growth of the health services sector and profoundly influenced its study.

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1914, Anderson received his bachelor's degree (1937) and master's degree in sociology (1938) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He then moved to the University of Michigan, where he received a bachelor's degree in library science (1940) and his doctorate degree in sociology (1948). While at Michigan, Anderson became the first sociologist to work in a school of public health, helping establish a research program in medical care and a health services research library. In 1949, he accepted an associate professor position on the Faculty of Medicine, University of Western Ontario, Canada—another first for a sociologist to join the faculty of a medical school. There, he studied the emerging areas of social epidemiology and also began to work in the utilization of physician services in a nearby medical insurance plan.

In 1952, Odin Anderson became the research director of the Health Information Foundation (HIF), located in New York. This nonprofit research agency was founded by pharmaceutical and chemical industries in 1950 to provide information and data for public policy formulation in the United States. Anderson developed and directed a unique and highly successful research program based on national surveys of the medical-care use and expenditures of the nation's population and cross-national comparisons of the operation of health services delivery systems and health insurance.

The HIF moved to the University of Chicago in 1962, where it was renamed the Center for Health Administration Studies. Anderson continued to serve as the research director and became a professor in the Graduate School of Business and the Department of Sociology. CHAS flourished under Anderson's direction, expanding its national and international health services research program with support from foundations and the federal government. The center served as a national model and reference point for health services research.

In 1980, on reaching the mandatory retirement age of 65 at the University of Chicago, Anderson returned to the University of Wisconsin–Madison [Page 81]with a half-time professorship in the Department of Sociology. He also continued to teach and to conduct research for another 10 years at CHAS as Professor Emeritus. In this last period of his career, he continued to be incredibly productive, conducting a study of Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) in Minneapolis–St. Paul and Chicago, writing a book on health services in several countries, and writing a history of the development of American health services since 1875.

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