Dr. Fries is Professor Emeritus of Medicine at Stanford University and is internationally recognized as a leader in strategies to postpone the disabilities of aging, long-term outcome assessment, self-care, and longitudinal studies of human aging. He has published over 450 peer-reviewed articles having over 58,000 citations and authored eleven books.
In 1980 he developed the Compression of Morbidity hypothesis that preventive measures have a greater effect upon morbidity than upon mortality and that chronic diseases with onset later in life will be present for a shorter time. On this thesis he has twice addressed the Nobel Forum and twice the Institute of Medicine; editorialized and been profiled in the American Journal of Public Health; and presented a policy paper in Health Affairs and a Special Article in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Fries established the ARAMIS Chronic Disease databank system as an NIH program in 1975 and guided it through 33 years and over 1,000 scientific papers. He plays an important role in The Health Project, a private-public organization that seeks solutions to health care through reduction in medical need.
In 1976 Dr. Fries and Dr. Donald Vickery pioneered use of self-management algorithms to help patients toward better health decisions with Take Care of Yourself, now with 15 million copies in print. Four randomized controlled trials documented the effectiveness of Take Care of Yourself in reducing the need for physician visits. Dr. Fries also authored or coauthored Living Well for seniors, The Arthritis Helpbook, and Arthritis: A Comprehensive Guide.
For the past 25 years the James F. and Sarah T. Fries Foundation has annually awarded the Fries Prize for Improving Health (working with the CDC Foundation) and the Elizabeth Fries Health Education Award (working with the Society of Public Health Educators, SOPHE). The former goes to that individual judged to have done the most to improve health (see friesfoundation.org) and the latter for the greatest contribution to health education. The Foundation also has endowed the Fries Chair in Medicine at Johns Hopkins for Lisa Cooper to examine disparities in cardiovascular health.
Dr. Fries lives with his wife of 58 years, Sarah, a horse, Harlequin Joker, and a Labrador Retriever, Princess, in Woodside, California. He has run the Boston Marathon and has climbed the highest mountain on all seven continents, summiting six. Sarah, despite serious disabilities from an active melanoma that confine her to a wheelchair, has been to all the latitudes and longitudes and all of the continents, and has explored in Antarctica, Patagonia, Svalbard, Greenland, Alaska, Burma, Tibet, Brazil, Cuba, Madagascar, and South Africa, among over 30 other wheelchair adventures. Sarah is a heroine to a lot of folks, including Jim.
Don Vickery died on November 22, 2008, at his home in Evergreen, Colorado, after a brief battle with a relentless cancer and is sorely missed by all of us who loved him. Don made major and legendary contributions to human health and improved millions of lives. He made a difference. He was the pioneering force behind “demand management” concepts and programs, showing that consumer-directed medical decision-making could improve health and reduce the need for medical care expenditures. He founded the Center for Consumer Health Education, now known as the Self-Care Institute, and Health Decisions International.
He concentrated on wellness rather than illness, prevention more than cure, and the power of the patient over that of the doctor. Throughout, he worked successfully to establish new concepts of prevention through lifestyle changes and wise consumer decisions on a base of solid scientific evidence. He authored and coauthored self-care books to bring wise decision-making to the public and also self-care articles for the health care professions. He was an original thinker, an extraordinary scholar, and a forceful advocate for better health for all.
Don trained at Harvard and Stanford Universities, was Board Certified in Internal Medicine, and was a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He worked closely with Partnership for Prevention and the American College of Preventive Medicine, of which he was also a Fellow. He had an easy wit and a fine ironic sense of humor. He was easy to be with, motivating to talk with, and a pleasure to work with. This book, which he coauthored through eight editions for over 33 years and 20 million copies, remains a substantial part of his legacy.