Dr. Robert Worth, expert on leprosy

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

Dr. Robert McAlpine Worth, a Honolulu epidemiologist and leprosy expert often called upon to provide expertise in remote and Third World areas, died Thursday after a long illness. He was 78.

WORTH

His fieldwork on Hansen's disease took him to Micronesia, New Guinea, Hong Kong and Nepal. During his career he was an adviser on leprosy to the World Health Organization and chief scientist for the Agent Orange Projects of the national Centers for Disease Control. He also served in the Hawai'i Department of Health and as a professor of epidemiology at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.

In 1975, Worth established the Health Services Research Center at the Pacific Health Research Institute and, from 1988 to 1992, served as chief of the Communicable Disease Division of the state Health Department.

"Dr. Robert Worth was among the pioneers in public health in Hawai'i," said Dr. David Curb, CEO of the Pacific Health Research Institute and one of the principal investigators of continuing research through the Honolulu Heart Program. The heart study alone has generated 350 scientific publications, "and many have resulted in important contributions to medical knowledge," said Curb.

"Dr. Worth's contributions have been an important element in the long-term success of a much larger research enterprise which now contributes to advances in many areas of medicine," said Curb.

Worth's years with the state Health Department took him from work with Hansen's disease patients in the 1950s to those suffering from AIDS in the 1980s, and he applied his knowledge of the former to ease public fears of the latter. Worth was staunch in his belief that public fear could create another Kalaupapa with an equivalent loss of civil rights, and he worked hard to prevent that.

"He was an outstanding epidemiologist with a worldwide reputation of excellence in his field of leprosy and other infectious diseases," said former state health director Bruce Anderson, now Environmental Health Program director at the U.H. John A. Burns School of Medicine. "He touched hundreds of lives and influenced the careers of dozens of health professionals in Hawai'i and throughout the Pacific."

As a professor of epidemiology from 1963 to 1985, he was the heart of the School of Public Health, said Anderson. "He never hesitated to jump in and help with current environmental health issues."

Worth conducted one of the few studies to document respiratory problems suffered by Big Island residents who lived downwind of Kilauea volcano's east rift zone.

Modest and unimposing, Worth wore rubber slippers and a T-shirt to work at UH.

Worth grew up in Jiangyin, China, where he was born Aug. 27, 1924, the son of a Presbyterian missionary family originally from Wilmington, N.C. His family moved to Hangzhou in the mid-1930s, and Worth left China in 1940, returning three years later while serving in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He received his Master's of Public Health from Harvard University School of Public Health and a Ph.D. from UC-Berkeley, doing his medical residency at San Mateo County Hospital in 1956.

Worth is survived by his wife, Annie Liu Worth; sons, Brian McAlpine Worth of Honolulu and Jonathan Liu Worth of Boston, Mass.; sister, Anna Ballagh Worth of Laurinburg, N.C.; stepmother, Hilda Blue Worth of Wilmington, N.C.; and stepsisters, Lucy Chadbourn Worth of Durham, N.C., and Julia Worth Holley of Dallas.

A Quaker memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. March 1 at the Honolulu Friends Meeting House, 2426 O'ahu Ave. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be sent to: Robert M. Worth Epidemiology Scholarship Fund, University of Hawai'i Foundation, 1960 East-West Road, BioMed T-101, Honolulu, HI 96822.