Fred Bass - Background

Background

Bass was born in New York City, attended Antioch College, Case-Western Reserve Medical School, Harvard,and Johns Hopkins. He served as a Preventive Medicine Officer in the US Army's 7th Infantry Division in Korea and Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. After his military service, he was a Tuberculosis Control Officer for the New Jersey Department of Health and Unit Medical Health Officer. He earned a Master's degree in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health and a Doctor of Science at Johns Hopkins, writing a thesis on Medical Care Use Attributable to Cigarette Smoking. He taught at the University of Pennsylvania and came to the Vancouver Health Department in 1975. There, in 1982, he became Director of Health Promotion.

In 1989, he founded the BC Doctors Stop-Smoking Program to help doctors help their patients stop smoking. He helped to form the Society for Clinical Preventive Care in 1997, which has a mission to implement proven clinical preventive measures. In 2001 he was awarded a Senior (life) Membership in the Canadian Medical Association for his extensive work in tobacco control. He continues in 2007 to serve as the Medical Director of the Society for Clinical Preventive Health Care.