Anders Forsdahl
The official opening of the congress included the premiere of a short film by Ellen Astri Lundby and Runar Jarle Wiik about a pioneer researcher of Nordic community medicine, Anders Forsdahl. He was a influential professor at the Department of Community Medicine, University of Tromsø until he pased away 2006, at the age of 75.
Anders Forsdahl was a dedicated community physician whose entrance into academic life occurred years after he had passed the age of 40. However, the observations made during his practice as GP in a mining and fishing community in the northernmost county of Finnmark during the sixties and early seventies, undoubtedly had a major effect on his later academic work. On the basis of these observations, he formulated the later well known hypothesis on the relationship between poor living conditions in childhood and important risk factors for (arteriosclerotic heart) disease in adult life. Comparing middle age (40-69) death rates among counties, he found a remarkably high correlation (.93) with infant mortality rates for the cohort 40-69 years earlier. Today this generic finding is known as the Forsdahl-Barker hypothesis, appreciating Forsdahl as the original source of the idea, and Barker as a later developer of this groundbreaking idea, (demonstrating the same relationship between inadequate nutrition in the foetus and risk of disease at the age of 50-60.)
Even after entering the professorship at the University of Tromsø, Anders Forsdahl maintained an enduring relationship with the community of Kirkenes, returning every summer to serve his patients. Everybody who enjoyed the privilege of knowing Anders Forsdahl, learned to appreciate his humble and honest behaviour as a person, and his combination of academic originality and dedication to the work of practicing doctors. For those unique qualities, a prize in memory of his legacy is established at the National Centre of Rural Medicine in Tromsø.
(From the Anders Forsdahl Award Seremony 2008, by Finn-Henry Hansen)
Best known article: Forsdahl A. Are poor living conditions in childhood and adolescence an important risk factor for arteriosclerotic heart disease? Br J Prev Soc Med 1977; 31: 91 -5.
