Forty years ago, in October 1984, a wild idea that had been gestating for some time came to fruition with the very first issue of the University of California, Berkeley, Wellness Letter. It was a difficult birth because it was something that had never been done at the university, and there were more detractors than there were supporters.
It all started on an ordinary day in October 1982, when a tall, handsome young man wearing basketball shorts and riding on rollerblades showed up with a few friends in the small office that I shared with Dr. Sheldon Margen at the School of Public Health. Sheldon and I had worked together for many years. He was an internationally known physician and nutrition researcher with a reputation for being unusually receptive to unconventional ideas; I was an administrator in his metabolic research unit.
Our visitor was Rodney Friedman, and he had come to Berkeley from New York with an idea to create a national newsletter devoted to health promotion and disease prevention. He wanted it to carry the UC Berkeley name, and he wanted to name it “Wellness,” a word that prior to that time was practically unknown. He presented a plan in which his company in New York would handle all publishing responsibilities, including a royalty arrangement for the School of Public Health. For our part, we would be responsible for setting and maintaining the editorial integrity of the newsletter.
Not surprisingly, Sheldon immediately saw this as a wonderful new idea, and, as usual, I was the grinch who worried about time commitments and all the things that could possibly go wrong. Fortunately, the dean of the School of Public Health, Joyce Lashof, MD, was an enthusiastic supporter who shared our curiosity and took the proposal to the faculty and administration of the university. They were clearly not prepared for this, since it would be the first time in their history that a public institution would partner with a private commercial enterprise. (This is now an everyday occurrence at almost all universities.)
Two years later, thanks to the hard work of Joyce, who promised to review and approve every word before it was published in the newsletter, and Sheldon, who agreed to create and chair an editorial board, the university signed on and the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter was born—and I became the managing editor, a four-decade position that has been rewarding in so many ways.
It took just a few years for the Wellness Letter to amass a million subscribers and claim national awards for excellence in reporting on a wide variety of health topics—from diet and fitness to self-care, disease prevention, and mental health. Our strength and distinctiveness: We relied then—and to this day—only on evidence-based information, along with our own critique of the “evidence,” and offered our BOTTOM LINE practical advice in ways that could be easily understood by our readers. Above all, keeping Joyce’s promise, no article gets published without editorial board review, whereby every word of every article of every issue is evaluated for clarity and accuracy.
In the years that followed, the newsletter generated millions of dollars in royalties that were specifically earmarked in perpetuity for financial aid to students in the School of Public Health. In 2000, as Sheldon’s health was failing, Dr. John Swartzberg—a member of the faculty and a well-known, much beloved local physician—took over the editorial responsibilities for the newsletter. Since that time he has expanded the editorial board to include dozens of recognized experts in almost all aspects of health and medicine.
Like everyone else in the world, we had a difficult time in 2020 resulting in the suspension of publication of the newsletter in September of that year. Thanks to Stuart Jordan, our new publisher (who had also been there on day one) and marketing expert Tim O’Brien, the Wellness Letter has relaunched, pivoting from a hardcopy newsletter to one that is now available in an easy-to-use digital format. This has allowed us to expand the scope of the articles, provide links to our sources, and react more quickly to the ever-changing world of wellness.
Over the years we lost a number of dear friends who were so important in the creation and success of the Wellness Letter. They include Rodney, Sheldon, and Joyce, along with founding editor Shirley Tomkiewicz. Another editor, Michael Goldman, who was also there from the start, retired after 35 years. Our current team still includes me and John from the early days; Andrea Klausner, our long-time senior editor and now executive editor since 2019; and Tim Jeffs, our creative director.
So, happy birthday to the Wellness Letter on our Ruby Jubilee, and a huge thank you to all our loyal subscribers who have made it possible for us to continue with our mission of being a trusted and reliable source for information we all need to get healthy and stay healthy. We look forward to our Golden Jubilee.
