Abstract
Sarah Tilton Fries, a champion of health education and devoted member of the Society for Public Health Education, died on May 25, 2017. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 27, 1938, she received her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University in 1960 and her MPH degree from San Jose State University in 1985.
During her study for the MPH, she was already well into a health education career with Healthtrac, Inc., an early Silicon Valley start-up that Sarah and her husband, James F. Fries, MD, professor of medicine at Stanford, had founded. Healthtrac produced the first tailored health-improvement program to be widely implemented. The interventions included validated health risk assessments, tailored feedback based on participant risks and readiness to change, and serial tracking and reinforcement of healthful behaviors. Sarah guided health education messaging for Healthtrac participants. Evaluation studies of Healthtrac with employee and retiree populations demonstrated reductions in health risks and health care costs for program participants.
She served as President of Healthtrac for 12 years as the company grew to service 10 million people by helping them improve health habits, exercise, and health risk reduction. Recognized four times with the C. Everett Koop National Health Award, which honors outstanding worksite health promotion programs, Healthtrac was used by Blue Shield of California, General Motors, and dozens of other companies to improve population health. Even after the sale of Healthtrac, Sarah continued to support the field of health education and health educators through her work with the Society of Public Health Education (SOPHE) and the Health Education Program at San Jose State. She also served as President of the League of Women Voters in San Mateo County.
In 1991, partly with proceeds from the sale of Healthtrac, Sarah and Jim endowed and launched the James F. and Sarah T. Fries Foundation. The Fries Foundation identifies and honors contributions to the health of the public. The foundation’s endowment funds the annual Fries Prize for Improving Health, now with $60,000, recognizing an individual who has made the greatest contribution to improving human health. They subsequently established in 1992 the annual Healthtrac Health Education Award, a $25,000 prize “for a health educator who has made a substantial contribution to advancing the field of health education or health promotion through research, program development, or program delivery.” This award was renamed the Elizabeth Fries Health Education Award in tribute to their daughter, a professor of health psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University and co-director of the Cancer Outreach Program, who died in 2005.
In recent years, the Fries Foundation has partnered with the CDC Foundation, and in 2014 the CDC Foundation was named by the Fries Foundation to undertake administrative management of its program of awards. In 2016, Sarah and Jim were honored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with the “Champions of Prevention” award for their contributions to public health and philanthropy.
In addition to making the awards, each year the Fries Foundation has been a sponsor of the annual meeting of the SOPHE, at which the Elizabeth Fries Health Education Award and Award Lecture are presented, a highlight of the annual meeting program since 1992. Sarah had been present for each of the Fries Foundation events at SOPHE annual meetings, including the most recent in 2017, despite severe limitations and declining health due to residual disability from malignant melanoma and multiple brain metastases.
Sarah was a lovely lady, kind and caring, and was loved by all with whom she worked or met.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Nancy Richardson and Kathleen Roe for their contributions to this In Memoriam.