Organisational Records

1956-1995

4 boxes

The section is arranged in five series as follows:

A/1 History and Constitution 1958 - 1995;

A/2 Council 1964 - 1995;

A/3 Executive Committee 1956 - 1993;

A/4 Membership and Secretariat 1961 - 1994;

A/5 IEA Archive 1991 - 1993

The International Epidemiological Association was founded in 1954 by Dr. John Pemberton (UK) and Dr. Harold Willard (USA), as the British section of the International Corresponding Club (ICC), with the help and advice of Dr. Robert Cruikshank. Established initially on a small and informal basis, the Club's purpose was to facilitate communication between doctors working in the field of social and preventive medicine thoughout the world. This was to be achieved through the publication of a Bulletin twice a year, and by fostering "friendly and hospitable" contact between members and visitors from other countries.

The first formal meeting of the ICC took place in London in June 1956, with correspondents from 18 countries. The success of this meeting resulted in the first International Scientific Meeting (ISM), held September 1957 in the Netherlands. At this meeting a constitution was formed, Executive Commitee elected and the first General Business Meeting was held, establishing the triennial administrative and organisational cycle of the Asssociation.

In 1958, the ICC was renamed, briefly, the International Epidemiological Club, before being finally renamed the International Epidemiological Association (IEA) at the second ISM in 1959.

The general organisation and control of the IEA is vested in the Council and Executive Committee, elected by members every three years at the ISM.

Membership of the IEA included a subscription to the Bulletin, which was superseded by theInternational Journal of Epidemiology (IJE) in 1972. Membership was open to any individual physician who shared the Association's aims and objectives, with dues kept low to encourage epidemiologists from developing countries to join. By 1990, the IEA had developed its Regional structure, based on World Health Organisation (WHO) regions, and agreed to accept national associations or groups of individuals as members from countries with a very low GDP, where the membership dues would be an unfair burden on individual practitioners. Widening the membership to ensure participation from developing and resource-poor countries and later, new national states in Eastern Europe, remained an on-going organisational priority.

The IEA's co-founder John Pemberton acted as the Association's first archivist from 1977 to 1987, and wrote a number of articles on the history of the IEA, included in the records.

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