Dr. Alton Cobb, a former Mississippi state health officer who helped create some of the nation’s most comprehensive vaccination requirements for children, died Friday. He was 92.
Cobb was the top public health official from 1973 to 1992 in one of the poorest states in the nation. The current state health officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, described Cobb as a “phenomenal public health leader.”
Cobb had a medical practice in the small town of Pickens, Mississippi, in the 1950s before becoming Sunflower County health director. He then went to work for the Mississippi State Department of Health as director of chronic disease services.