Dr. Robert Spear, schistosomiasis expert and respected public health mentor, dies at 86

Robert C. Spear, PhD, MS, professor emeritus at UC Berkeley School of Public Health and founding director of the University’s Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, passed away peacefully at home in Walnut Creek on July 7.

Spear enjoyed a distinguished career in public health, beginning in 1969, when a post-doctoral research position at UC Berkeley led to a professorship at the School of Public Health, and grew into a career that lasted over five decades. In that time, Spear contributed valuable work to mitigate the effects of pesticides on farmworkers, to the assessment and control of exposures to many chemical and biological agents, and led an extensive study of the disease schistosomiasis, caused by parasitic flatworms and affecting over 250 million people worldwide.

“An engineer by training [his three degrees were all in the field], Spear brought uncommon rigor, clarity, and interdisciplinary insight to his work on exposure assessment, infectious disease transmission, and environmental determinants of health. His work on schistosomiasis in Sichuan Province, China—conducted in close partnership with Chinese scientists—was recognized with the Jinding Award in 2003, the Friendship Award from the State Council of the People’s Republic of China in 2005, and honorary citizenship in Xichang County in 2009,” said UC Berkeley School of Public Health Dean Michael C. Lu.

“Spear served with great distinction in leadership roles at the school and the university, including as founding director of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH), associate dean of the School of Public Health and the College of Engineering, and acting dean before his retirement in 2008. He also served the broader university as chair of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate in 1999–2000. In recognition of his extraordinary contributions, he received the Berkeley Citation in 2008 and the Berkeley Faculty Service Award in 2011.”

During his long career, Spear published over 150 scholarly papers, most of them written in collaboration with his graduate students, and contributed dozens of chapters to textbooks in the field.

Along with his many professional accolades, Spear was also known as an outstanding mentor and colleague. He supervised dozens of graduate students, many of whom have gone on to impressive careers of their own in the field of public health.

“Spear was a great mentor, for me personally and to many others,” recalled UC Berkeley Professor John Balmes. “He was both wise and strategically savvy. I often sought Bob’s counsel. I always felt supported by Bob and was truly honored that he had faith in me. I will miss Bob more than words can convey. He literally changed my life.”

Elizabeth Carlton, now professor and chair of the department of Environmental & Occupational Health at Colorado School of Public Health, studied and worked under Spear for seven years and noted that Spear had a knack for setting up his mentees for success. “Bob has five academic department chairs among his students,” she said.

In a letter Carlton wrote to nominate Spear for a UC Berkeley mentoring award, she wrote: “Mentoring students involves a leap of faith—trusting your students to run with an idea, to represent your research group, to find meaning in data you have spent years collecting. Bob has incredible faith in the abilities of his students—and the further I get from my graduate studies, the more I appreciate this gift. He has this keen ability to lead his students onto a path, give them just enough advice and support to set them up for success, and then lets them run, nudging them back on course when they go astray.”

Dr. Song Liang, professor and chair of the department of Environmental Health Sciences at UMass Amherst, also received a PhD under Spear’s mentorship and first met him while Spear was on one of his many trips to China to collaborate with local researchers on schistosomiasis research.

Liang credits Spear with his decision to study for his PhD at Berkeley and said his own work was strongly influenced by Spear’s training as an engineer.

“I think the unique perspective to the way he wanted to study the disease influenced me,” said Liang. “I think that Bob’s way of thinking is a solution-oriented way and different from the public health perspective.”

“His intellectual contributions were remarkably broad,” said UC Berkeley School of Public Health Professor Justin Remais, who also studied under Spear. “He was an early leader on the toxicology of pesticide exposures among agricultural workers; a pioneer in applying systems modeling to public health problem solving; and ultimately a leader in developing theory to enable the integrated control of global infectious diseases. In the finest tradition of the University of California, Bob invented and reinvented ways for his field—environmental health sciences—to solve the world’s most complex problems… Bob trained generations of public health leaders, and his memory will live on within the halls of environmental health sciences departments across the nation and world, including here at Berkeley Public Health.”

From rocket science to a deep relationship with China

According to his family, a long life in academia would not have been the prediction for Spear early on; apart from one uncle, no one in his family had previously been to college. His father, a mortician, died when Spear was only two years old. Spear and his mother, Maytie, moved back to Stockton, her family home, where they lived with her parents for several years. His early childhood included years living with family in Escalon, and then, after his mother remarried, three years each in Sacramento and Antioch. The family arrived in Berkeley in time for Spear to begin 10th grade at Berkeley High School, where he realized his academic abilities, which in turn earned him a spot at UC Berkeley.

Prior to joining the UC Berkeley School of Public Health in 1970, he used his engineering degrees to work for several years at the Naval Weapons Station in China Lake, California, where he was, in fact, a rocket scientist.

In 1962, he married Patricia (Patty) Warner, and after completing their studies at UC Berkeley, they moved to China Lake for a year. In 1963, with the blessing of the Navy and a grant from the National Science Foundation, they headed for Cambridge University in England, where they spent three very happy years, years Spear later referred to as “one of the smartest decisions we ever made.” Along with earning his PhD in 1968, they made lifelong friends who they continued to visit across the globe over the rest of their adult lives.

A year’s sabbatical in Australia allowed for explorations across that continent (and the South Pacific), and soon after returning to Berkeley in 1978, Spear accepted a chance to meet with the president of the Beijing Medical University and was offered the chance to visit China, an opportunity offered few westerners at that point in time, and one he and Patty jumped at.

This began his long professional relationship with China and the Chinese public health community; he told one of his final graduate students that he wound up visiting China over 40 times. Most of his travel to China involved work on researching schistosomiasis, work which in later years also took him to Zanzibar and Thailand. In all, Spear traveled to six of the seven continents, as much for pleasure as for work (though he was expert at finding work-related connections to help support a variety of these trips). His seven passports contain a collection of over 150 stamps.

His wife Patty’s death in 2014 came as a shock; in its wake, however, Spear reconnected with Suzanne Llewellyn, with whom he’d worked for much of his time at UC Berkeley. Their partnership brought great joy to the last 11 years of his life, as they traveled together, and spent good time in Berkeley, New Hampshire, and Suzanne’s home in Walnut Creek.

Spear is survived by his children, Andy and Jenna; their partners Sarah Spear and Sean O’Mara; and four grandchildren, Caleb and Jonas O’Mara, and Celeste and Sacha Spear. He’s also survived by his partner, Suzanne, and her son Ryan and wife, Robin, and their two daughters Lacey and Josie.