Anthony William Robbins, a pioneering public health official credited with expanding health care access for low-income families, died on July 5 at his home in Rockport, Massachusetts. He was 85. His passing was attributed to complications from long Covid, heart disease, and Parkinson’s disease, according to his wife, Phyllis Freeman.
Dr. Robbins played a key role in developing Vermont’s Women, Infants, and Children supplemental food program (WIC), which launched statewide in 1974 as the nation’s first such initiative. The program provided essential nutritional supplements, such as milk, eggs, cereal, and baby formula, and was designed to serve families without attaching stigma, delivering goods uniformly to homes across income levels. Today, WIC operates in all 50 states.
During his tenure as Vermont’s health commissioner (1973-1976), Robbins also helped establish the “Tooth Fairy Program,” the first state-funded dental care initiative for children from low-income families. The program addressed severe dental health crises among children, some of whom resorted to harmful methods to ease tooth pain. While the program was driven by state legislators and activists, dental and public health experts have noted Robbins’s critical support as a health commissioner in its successful implementation.
Robbins, born January 9, 1941, in Manhattan, earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1962, his medical degree from Yale in 1967, and a master’s in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School in 1969. Though trained in internal medicine, he dedicated his career to health policy and administration. After Vermont, he served as Colorado’s health commissioner from 1976 to 1978, where he introduced early workplace smoking bans and advocated against the use of plutonium at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, which closed in 1992.
At the federal level, Robbins directed the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) from 1978 to 1981 and advised on the government’s response to the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident. His tenure ended abruptly in 1981 when the Reagan administration accused him of being too closely aligned with organized labor; he was removed from his position and the Public Health Service commission.
Following this, Robbins worked on the senior health staff of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, contributing to legislation that included enhanced cigarette warning labels and helped draft the National Vaccine Program alongside his wife. In 1993-1994, he served as director of the first national vaccine plan under the Clinton administration. However, the initiative encountered challenges, including disputes over vaccine manufacturer practices and scaled-back federal plans for vaccine distribution.
Robbins was known for his willingness to champion controversial figures and causes. In 1974, he hired John Froines, an antiwar activist and former Chicago Seven defendant, as director of occupational health in Vermont, defending Froines’s scientific qualifications despite public criticism.
Together with his wife, Phyllis Freeman, Robbins coedited the Journal of Public Health Policy from 2003 until 2019. In 2017, he orchestrated a lighthearted challenge during the Trump administration’s restrictions on certain CDC terminology, encouraging journal readers worldwide to incorporate all seven banned words into a single sentence, drawing broad international participation.
Dr. Robbins is survived by his wife, two sons from his first marriage to Jennifer Lauterbach (an assistant attorney general of Maryland, who died in 1987), a brother, and four grandchildren. His career reflected a commitment to expanding health care access and addressing public health challenges with a progressive and often courageous approach.