In remembrance of our colleagues who have passed away in recent years, SAVIR dedicates this space to honor their lives, contributions, and the lasting impact they have left on our community. Each name represents not just a loss, but a legacy of dedication and professional contributions.
Though they are no longer with us, their influence remains in the work we do and the lives they have saved. May this page serve as a tribute to their spirit and a reminder of the invaluable role they played in our field.
To contact SAVIR about a potential addition to this page, please email info@thesavir.org.
Abraham Bergman (1932-2023)
A pediatrician at the University of Washington, Bergman labelled himself a doctor of “political medicine.” His advocacy efforts are credited with advancing the cause of children’s safety in multiple areas. He advocated for safety of children’s sleepwear through the Flammable Fabrics Act of 1967. He led efforts to understand the scourge of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and destigmatize these deaths. He also was instrumental in creating the 1970 Poison Prevention Packaging Act that required childproof caps on medicine bottles and succeeded in reducing child poisoning substantially. He led the creation of the National Health Service Corps in 1982. In 1987 he founded the University of Washington Injury Prevention Research Center in 1987, one of the original five ICRCs.
Linda Bourque (1941-2019)
Dr. Bourque co-led the launch of the Center for Public Health and Disasters at the University of California Los Angeles. It was one of the first such centers in the U.S. She helped train multiple professionals in disaster and emergency preparedness. She served for more than four decades on the faculty at UCLA, publishing widely on multiple topics critical to preparedness.
Katherine Kaufer Christoffel (1949-2023)
Dr. Christoffel, a pediatrician at Northwestern University in Chicago is remembered for her pioneering work to support child safety in several arenas, including work on passenger safety and adolescent injury prevention. She is probably best known in injury circles for her groundbreaking work addressing firearm safety for children. She formed the Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan (HELP) with the intent of mobilizing support for gun injury prevention and led multiple community advocacy efforts to address children’s health and safety. In addition to her passion for safety, she did research and promoted strategies to prevent child obesity.
Thomas M. Cook (1944-2024)
Dr. Cook had an M.S. in biomedical engineering and a PhD in ergonomics.
Dr. Cook served in the University of Iowa College of Medicine’s Department of Preventive Medicine and Environmental Health. He was part of the University of Iowa Injury Prevention Research Center and the Great Plains Center for Agricultural Health. He worked with the Center to Protect Worker Rights, concentrating on the construction industry and the NIOSH-sponsored Healthier Worker Center of Excellence. He provided ergonomics consultation for collaboration in the Eastern European countries of Romania, Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and West Africa’s The Gambia.
Leslie Fisher (1942-2023)
Trained in environmental health, Les Fisher had a long career with a focus on injury control. He served as head of the injury program at the New York State Health Department. In his later years he was active in providing historical context to developments in the field, taking on the role of archivist for the American Public Health Association’s Injury Control and Emergency Health Services Section.
Susan Gerberich (1938-2023)
Trained in both nursing and public health, Dr. Gerberich served on the University of Minnesota’s Division of Environmental Health Sciences faculty since 1980. She served as Director of the Midwest Center for Occupational Health and Safety and developed injury control training.
In response to her observations of severe injuries and deaths in high school football, she launched the first major comprehensive study of football injuries in Minnesota high schools in 1978, including documentation of high rates of concussions and spinal trauma symptoms. At the School of Public Health she developed a major teaching and research program in injury epidemiology and prevention and served as Director of the Regional Injury Prevention Research Center and the Co-Director of the Center for Violence Prevention and Control.
Murray L. Katcher (1945-2024)
Dr. Katcher completed a Ph.D. in chemistry before deciding to pursue medical school and specialize in pediatrics, with a focus on injury prevention. For over two decades, he was the director of MEDiC at the Salvation Army Clinic, where he supervised UW student clinicians as they provided medical care for mothers and children. He was passionate about advocating for injury prevention policy. His work was instrumental at a national level in convincing manufacturers to preset their water heaters to a safe temperature to prevent scalding burns to the elderly and infants.
Katcher later became head of Maternal and Child Health in the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. He was heavily involved with the American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups advocating for public health policy initiatives.
Dinesh Mohan (1945-2021)
Raised in India, Dr. Mohan trained at University of Delaware (MS) and University of Michigan (PhD) in bioengineering. He worked at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in the US, focused on vulnerable populations, but returned to India aftr several years. In India, he initiated the Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Programme (TRIPP) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi. Mohan did research on a range of transportation issues, including assessing motorcycle helmet designs and safer rickshaws. He was a strong advocate for human rights in both India and internationally and was instrumental in developing international collaborations in injury prevention.
I. Barry Pless (1933-2023)
Dr. Pless, a pediatric epidemiologist served most of his career in Montreal. He was trained at Harvard as well as Montreal Children’s Hospital (a McGill University teaching hospital). For a time he taught at University of Rochester then landed back in Montreal for the remainder of his career as a clinician and teacher. His early research in Rochester focused on the adverse psychosocial consequences of chronic illness in children. Later he shifted his focus from chronic disease to childhood injury epidemiology. He was instrumental in developing surveillance systems for child injury, having led the development of the Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program (CHIRPP), a national consortium of 11 pediatric and nine general hospitals that collects standardized data on cases of childhood injury seen at those hospitals. He was the founding and long-time editor of the leading journal in the field, Injury Prevention.
Leif Svanström (1943-2023)
A Swedish physician, Dr. Svanström was trained in genetics, sociology, and in occupational health and social medicine, completing a PhD in social medicine. He served for more than four decades on the faculty at the Karolinska Institute. He chaired the first First World Conference of Accident and Injury Prevention in 1989. He also led the development of the Safe Communities initiative, a worldwide effort to establish community-wide injury prevention initiatives.
Julian A. Waller (1932-2022)
Dr. Waller was a long-time professor at University of Vermont School of Medicine, after also having served in the US Public Health Service and California Department of Public Health. An internist, Waller taught medical students about preventive medicine and conducted research on a range of topics in injury epidemiology. He authored one of the early textbooks in Injury Control and published widely.
