Revision as of 16:04, 27 September 2013

Peter Bourne (born 1939 in Oxford, England) is a physician, anthropologist, biographer, author and international civil servant with experience in several senior government positions. He is currently Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, Vice-Chancellor Emeritus at [[St. George's University, Grenada and Chairman, Medical Education Collaboration with Cuba (MEDICC) He is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford.

Life and career

Bourne was born in 1939 in Oxford, England. He received his early education at the Dragon School before attending Whitgift College, Croydon. He graduated with an MD degree from Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, in 1962, and received an MA in anthropology from Stanford University, California, in 1969. After graduating, he spent a year as a fellow in the Department of Psychiatry, Emory University studying arrested alcoholics in the city jail in Atlanta. He was active in the Civil Rights movement and participated in the effort to integrate lunch counters in the city. In 1963-64 he was a rotating intern,Kings County Hospital, Seattle. He subsequently entered the military service, as a Captain in the United States Army. He was assigned to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), where he studied the psychological and physiological effects of stress on basic trainees. He spent one year in Vietnam as head of the Army's Psychiatric]] Research Team, where he studied stress in helicopter ambulance medics and Special Forces. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, the Air Medal and the Combat Medics Badge. After returning from Vietnam he was active in the anti-war movement. Upon discharge from the Army he completed a residency in psychiatry at Stanford University, California. During this period he also worked as a volunteer in the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic.

In 1969 he returned to Emory University, Atlanta as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, and Community Health. He ran the mental health department of a Federally funded Community Health Center which he eventually expanded into a free standing mental health center-the first in Georgia. He continued to play an active role in the integration efforts in Georgia and the South. Bourne had run, as part of his mental health center, a treatment program for heroin addicts. As a result he was appointed by the newly elected Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carterto set up Georgia's first statewide drug addiction/drugtreatment program. Bourne was personally close to Carter and was influential in convincing him to run for the Presidency. He would later become a key strategist and deputy campaign campaign director for Carter running the Washington office for the successsful 1976 presidential campaign.

As a result of setting up and successfully running Georgia's first statewide drug treatment program, Bourne was asked to take a position as Assistant Director in charge of treatment programs in President Nixon's Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP) in Washington. Bourne did so with the intention of resigning as soon as Carter announced his plans to run for the presidency.

Under Jimmy Carter, Bourne was appointed special assistant to the President for health issues and Director of the Office of Office of Drug Abuse Policy,(ODAP) He resigned this position on July 20th amid controversy concerning his efforts to maintain the confidentiality of one of his staff for whom he had written a prescription. Under his leadership the number of deaths from drug overdoses dropped to its lowest level in 30 years. He conducted a major review of the US involvement in global health with Carter becoming the first president to announce a priority for the US in this area. He also established presidential commissions on World Hunger and Malnutrition, the UN Year of the Child, and with Rosalynn Carter on Mental Health.

In 1979, Bourne became an Assistant Secretary-General at the United Nations, where he established and ran the "International Drinking Water and Sanitation Decade," a 10-year program that provided clean drinking water to 500 million people worldwide. As part of the program Bourne launched, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,a global campaign to eradicate the water borne disease caused by guinea worm. Eventually he conviced former president Carter to become the public face of the campaign. After leaving the UN in 1982 for the private sector, he served on the boards of numerous charities.

In 1995 as an Advisor on Foreign Policy to US Congressman Bill Richardson, Bourne accompanied him to Baghdad for a meeting with Saddam Hussein to secure the release of two American aerospace workers who had been captured by the Iraqis after wandering over the Kuwaiti border. Richardson and Bourne subsequently collaborated on a number of such efforts in Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, and North Korea, where they helped win the release of an American lay preacher who had crossed to the wrong side of the border.

Dr Bourne has authored over a hundred articles and written or edited ten books.

References

External links =

• Anderson, Patrick: High in America: The True Story Behind NORML and the Politics of Marijuana.
• Onterview: Peter Bourne, PBS.

Template:Persondata

• Use dmy dates from August 2013
• 1939 births
• Living people
• People from Oxford
• People educated at The Dragon School
• People educated at Whitgift School
• Emory University School of Medicine alumni
• Stanford University alumni
• American anthropologists
• American biographers
• American civil servants
• United States Army officers
• The Hunger Project
• Recipients of the Bronze Star Medal
• Recipients of the Air Medal