JACKSON(AP) — Dr. Dennis Frate, a medical anthropologist who studied rural health in the Mississippi Delta, was killed in a traffic accident near his Canton home. He was 59.

Frate died Monday in a two-car accident on Ratliff Ferry Road near his home in Canton, according to Madison County Coroner Alex Breeland.

Frate was a former pharmacy professor at the University of Mississippi, working at the School of Pharmacy from 1980 until 2000, according to the university.

He retired June 30 as a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Frate served as coordinator of the Rural Health Research Program and principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health-funded study to develop community-based programs to control high blood pressure in rural populations.

He also did studies on prolonged pesticide exposure and its impact on health, the university said in a www.clarionledger.com article.

‘‘Dennis took a lot of pride in being a grassroots researcher who actually got out into the field and really worked with the people he was studying, rather than just sitting in a lab somewhere and collecting data,’’ Ben Banahan, Ole Miss professor of pharmacy administration, said in an Ole Miss news release.

Mick Kolassa, adjunct professor of pharmacy administration and president of Medical Marketing Economics in Oxford, said Frate had a unique way of looking at issues.

‘‘Working in a number of diverse and complex projects, Dennis was able to adapt his knowledge base to just about any situation,’’ Kolassa said in the news release. ‘‘Whether we were trying to understand how a physician reached a decision or how often residents of the Delta ate fish, Dennis had insights that were always amazing.’’

Frate earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Miami University and completed master’s and doctoral degrees in medical anthropology at the University of Illinois. During his graduate work, he studied geophagy, the practice of eating dirt, in the Delta.

Frate is survived by his wife, Juliet, and a daughter, Elizabeth.



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Information from: The Clarion-Ledger, http://www.clarionledger.com



AP-CS-10-28-07 1733EDT