News

In Memoriam: Lawrence M. Brass, M.D.

A letter from Dean Robert Alpern to the Yale medical community,

It is with great sadness that I share news of the passing of Lawrence M. Brass, M.D., professor of neurology and epidemiology, who died of cancer on Wednesday. Dr. Brass was a nationally recognized expert who devoted his professional life to improving care and outcomes for patients with stroke. He was 49.

Dr. Brass was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., one of three children of Melvin and Joyce Brass. He received his undergraduate degree in mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania before going on to Tufts Medical School. He did an internship at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Massachusetts and a residency and chief residency in neurology, as well as a stroke fellowship, at the Neurological Institute of New York at Columbia University. In 1987 he was recruited by Yale to establish a stroke program. In addition to his appointments in neurology and EPH, he was chief of neurology at the VA Connecticut Healthcare Systems West Haven campus and co-director of the Yale Cerebrovascular Center.

Dr. Brass was known among his colleagues as a magnanimous ambassador for stroke medicine. His colorful personality and clever mind attracted students and collaborators from disciplines as diverse as gynecology and epidemiology. He began his career examining the performance characteristics of imaging in clinical stroke and then designed a clinical trial based on accumulating epidemiologic and basic science evidence indicating a possible role of estrogen therapy in protection against stroke. The National Institutes of Health funded the Womens Estrogen for Stroke Study from 1993-2001. Over the next few years, Dr. Brass was the co-principal investigator on the Hemorrhagic Stroke Project, the largest case control study ever conducted for hemorrhagic stroke, and he became more involved in health services research with studies on racial disparities in stroke care, thrombolysis and anticoagulation among veterans with atrial fibrillation.

One of his extraordinary legacies is a database, of which he was the principal co-founder, comprising more than six million cases of stroke. The repository contains data on all Medicare beneficiaries age 65 years or older with a stroke or stroke-related diagnosis and every hospital admission for those individuals spanning a 14-year interval. It is the first complete database of stroke among the elderly in the United States.

In addition to his parents, Dr. Brass is survived by his wife, Lori Ann Brass; two children, Schuyler and Zachary; and two sisters, Jill Brass and Susan McInerney. A funeral service will be held at 1 p.m. on Friday, March 10, at Congregation Mishkan Israel, 785 Ridge Road, Hamden CT, followed by the burial service at the Grove Street Cemetery.