Health care statistician and consultant Barkev S. Sanders was born Barkev S. Sandragortizian (alternatively Sandrakortizian) in Van, Turkey on July 2, 1903. Sanders was a volunteer in the Armenian army from March 1918 to September 1919. After migrating to the United States in 1921 he changed his name to Sanders.
Sanders graduated from Bridgewater State Teachers College in 1926 and earned his M.A. in 1927 and Ph.D. in 1934 from Columbia University, specializing first in social psychology and then in sociology. In 1939 he completed a law degree from George Washington University.
While finishing his doctorate, Sanders worked as a freelance consultant for the Veterans Administration (1929, hospital needs for mentally ill veterans), the White House Conference on Children's Development (1930, the impact of environmental conditions on growth), and Columbia University Research Council (1931-1932, automobile accident compensation). Sanders' work on automobile compensation for Columbia was considered to be a forerunner of the no-fault insurance concept.
In 1932 Sanders was employed by the U.S. Public Health Service as a medical statistician and psychologist in the Division of Mental Hygiene, during which time (1932-1935) he studied characteristics of prison inmates and the mentally ill. During the period from 1934 through 1937 he was on loan from USPHS working first for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and later for the attorney general. In the second capacity he directed the attorney general's survey of release procedures.
In 1937 Sanders became section chief of the Division of Health Studies of the Social Security Board. This position later became known as chief of the Division of Health and Disability Studies. The majority of Sanders' work on Social Security concerned the financial status and medical needs of population groups that relied on governmental aid for medical expenses. During 1947 Sanders served as adviser to General Douglas MacArthur on social insurance needs in Japan.
From 1948 through 1950 Sanders was a consultant for the Division of Research and Statistics, and from 1950 through 1956 he worked for the Bureau of Old Age and Survivor's Insurance. In this capacity Sanders helped to develop insurance programs for permanent and temporary disability and was instrumental in the definition of disability. During this period he also taught courses on medical economics and public health statistics at American University (1947-1958), Catholic University (1951-1958), and Johns Hopkins University, 1952-1956, and he worked as a research consultant for the President's Commission on Veterans' Pensions.
In 1956 Sanders again joined the U.S. Public Health Service, this time as a consultant on the Division of General Health Services to assess levels of community health. During his last years with the Public Health Service Sanders disagreed with his superiors over the use of morbidity statistics and he tried unsuccessfully for three years to publish his monograph on the topic, “Evaluation of Morbidity Surveys.” As the result of his work for both the Social Security Administration and the Public Health Service during the 1960s Sanders was at the center of the medicare debate, arguing publicly that the program's costs were underestimated.
Before his retirement from government service in 1964 Sanders began to work extensively as a private health statistics consultant. He advised the United Mine Workers on retirement and pension plans (1960-1964), and working for the American Medical Association he prepared a report criticizing the conclusion and methods of a government publication, “One Third of a Nation,” which argued that the high rejection rate of the Selective Service System was the fault of poor health care. During the early 1960s Sanders was an actuarial consultant for the University of Pittsburgh under a contract from the Atomic Energy Commission to study the effect of atomic radiation on the employees of commission contractors. In 1964 he became the principal investigator for a project of the Patent, Trademark and Copyright Research Institute of George Washington University to study the relation between patents and economic activity, a subject which had long been of personal interest.
In 1970 Sanders moved to San Diego. During this period he continued to be active as a board member of the Foundation for Institutes of Research and Advanced Studies, an organization founded to enable retired scientists to continue their careers. Sanders also consulted with the Texas Hospital Association.
Throughout his career Sanders wrote extensively, publishing nearly 200 articles or bureau memoranda and one book, Environment and Growth (1934), which was derived from his dissertation. Sanders has been a member of the American Statistical Association and the American Public Health Association.
Sanders married Bessie Gruber in 1930. They are the parents of a son and a daughter.
