Ruth Roemer

Ruth Roemer (1916 – August 1, 2005) was an American lawyer and public health researcher who championed the importance of human rights in the field of public health.

Early life Ruth Joy Rosebaum was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1916. After their father's death, Mrs. Rosebaum moved the family to Milford, Connecticut, where Ruth spent the rest of her youth. with a BA degree in English. Roemer and her husband moved to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1951, when he became the Chief of Social and Occupational Health for the newly formed World Health Organization (WHO). Soon after Milton Roemer's appointment at the WHO, the United States withdrew his appointment under the political pressure of the McCarthy era. In 1953 the Roemers moved to Saskastchewan, Canada. In Canada, Roemer worked as a researcher with the Royal Commission on Agriculture and Rural Life in Saskatchewan. At Cornell, Roemer worked with Professor Bertram F. Wilcox as the associate director of a research project investigating the admissions decisions of New York mental hospitals. Their research resulted in a book Mental Illness and Due Process which led to landmark New York state mental hospital admission policy legislation.

Roemer is perhaps best known for her work crafting international tobacco control policy.

In her tenure at UCLA, Roemer taught a generation of public health students and made significant contributions to the fields of women's reproductive rights, health-law, health workforce policy and tobacco legislation. Her publications include: Mental Illness and Due Process (1962) Public Hospitals under Private Management: The California Experience (1983) Legislative action to combat the world tobacco epidemic (WHO, 1992) Abortion law: the approaches of different nations (APHA, 1967) Origins of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (2005)

Roemer was an active member of the American Public Health Association (APHA) since joining the organization in 1967. She served on several APHA committees and was elected president of the organization in October 1986 and served a one-year term.

Roemer and her husband set up an annual award for local health officers, the Milton and Ruth Roemer Prize for Creative Local Public Health Work. The prize is administered by the American Public Health Association.

Personal life Ruth and Milton Roemer had two children, John E. Roemer and Beth Roemer Lewis. Milton Roemer died of heart failure on January 3, 2001, at the age of 84. Ruth and Milton Roemer were married for 62 years.

Roemer died of cardiac arrest on August 1, 2005, at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in West Los Angeles, California. She was 89 years old.