News Release

Professor Emeritus Robert N. Grosse dies at age 82.

March 31, 2005, press release from the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Robert Nathan Grosse, Professor Emeritus in the University of Michigan School of Public Health and in the UM College of Architecture and Urban Planning, died March 21, 2005 in St. Petersburg, Florida, after a brief illness. He was 82.

“In an era in which we in public health are placing increasing emphasis on global health, it is especially poignant to learn of Bob Grosse's death," said his former colleague Kenneth Warner, the Avedis Donabedian Distinguished University Professor of Public Health. "He played a significant role in bringing formal methods of health planning to public health colleagues in developing countries. Through his work alone, UM SPH alumni groups sprouted in such countries as Indonesia."

Grosse joined the University of Michigan faculty in 1968. In 1974, he initiated the program in health and economic development, which he directed until 1985. He served as chair of the Department of Health Planning and Administration from 1980-82. In 1985, he was appointed professor in the Department of Population Planning and International Health and directed, until his retirement in 1992, its international health degree program at both the master's and the doctoral levels. In 1990, he was appointed professor of urban, technological, and environmental planning in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning.

A health planning model that Grosse developed has been used by a number of countries to help make decisions about the allocation of public funds to the health sector. His research on identifying the determinants of health status in developing countries led to studies of the effects of water supply and sanitation investments and the relationship of literacy and education to health status. His work with the World Health Organization and other entities took him to Asia, South America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East.

"When working overseas, he was the anti-ugly American," recalls Grosse's son Daniel. "He thoroughly immersed himself in each region's literature, culture, history and politics."

Grosse was born in New York City and grew up in Brooklyn and Manhattan in a culturally and politically aware household. He received his AB degree from Columbia College and his master’s degree and PhD in economics from Harvard University. After graduation, he worked with the Harvard Research Project on the Structure of the American Economy, with the United States Bureau of the Budget’s Office of Statistical Standards, and at the Rand Corporation, where he helped to develop methods of systems cost analysis and headed a project to design the Defense Department’s program budgeting system. During the Johnson administration, Grosse worked at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, pioneering methods for analyzing the relationships between expenditures and outcomes of social programs.

An avid tennis player and a voracious reader, especially of plays, he enjoyed travel, theater, and spectator sports. He served on the board of several nonprofit organizations, including the Ann Arbor chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. He is survived by his wife, Marilyn Scott; three sons; one stepson and one stepdaughter; and five grandchildren. His first wife, Pearl Feldman Grosse, died in 1991.

Contact: Terri Mellow, UM SPH Director of Communications
Phone: (734) 764-8094
E-mail: twm@umich.edu