Nancy E. Adler, a health psychologist whose work helped transform the public understanding of the relationship between socioeconomic status and physical health, died on Jan. 4 at her home in San Francisco. She was 77.

Dr. Adler was instrumental in documenting the role that education, income and self-perceived status in society play in predicting health and longevity. Today the connection is well known among public health experts that life expectancy is determined more by zip code than genetic code. But it was an obscure notion as recently as 30 years ago.

Zvika Klein has been named the new chief editor of the Jerusalem Post, succeeding Avi Mayer. Klein has been the newspaper’s Diaspora Affairs correspondent and deputy editor-in-chief.

Previously, Klein, an Israeli-American, had been for 10 years the Diaspora Affairs reporter for the Makor Rishon newspaper.

Former U.S. Secretary of State and national security advisor Henry Kissinger, arguably one of the most influential and also controversial foreign policy figures of our time, died Nov. 29 at the age of 100.

His policies and strategies under former Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford brought widespread attention, both positive and negative, that changed the course of American history.

Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to arrange the end of U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War, and is credited with secret diplomacy that helped Nixon open communist China to the U.S. and the West. But he was also reviled by many over the bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War and accused by critics of needlessly expanding the conflict.

Kissinger escaped Nazi Germany in his youth and came to the U.S. in 1938 before ultimately cementing his legacy in foreign policy in the 1970s.

Writer-producer Norman Lear, who revolutionized American comedy with such daring and immensely popular early-‘70s sitcoms as “All in the Family” and “Sanford and Son,” died Dec. 5 in his home in Los Angeles. He was 101.

Lear’s shows were the first to address the serious political cultural and social flashpoints of the day — racism, abortion, homosexuality, the Vietnam War — by working new wrinkles into the standard domestic comedy formula. No subject was taboo. Their fresh outrageousness turned them into huge ratings successes. “Family” accounted for six spin-offs, was honored with four Emmys in 1971-73, and a 1977 Peabody Award for Lear “for giving us comedy with a social conscience.”

Some of Lear’s other creations played with TV conventions. “One Day at a Time” (1975-84) featured a single mother of two young girls, a new concept for a sitcom. “Diff’rent Strokes” (1978-86) followed the growing pains of two Black kids adopted by a wealthy white businessman.

Frances Sternhagen, the Tony Award-winning actress who played leading roles in stage productions of “Driving Miss Daisy” and “On Golden Pond” as formidable older women when she was so young that she had to wear aging makeup, died on Dec. 4 in New Rochelle, NY. She was 93.

Miss Sternhagen won Tonys as featured actress in a play for her performances in two widely diverse productions. In a 1995 Broadway revival of “The Heiress,” based on Henry James’s novel Washington Square, she was Cherry Jones’s well-meaning, matchmaking Aunt Lavinia. In “The Good Doctor,” Neil Simon’s 1973 take on Chekhov, she played multiple roles in comedy sketches.

On television, she played the controlling working-class mother of the oddball postal carrier Cliff Clavin on “Cheers,” and was Dr. John Carter’s aristocratic Chicago grandmother on “ER,” among other maternal figures in memorable hit series. She continued working into her 80s, playing her final film role in “And So It Goes” (2014), a comic drama in which she played a wise, snarky and chain-smoking real estate agent.

Suzanne Shepherd, an influential New York acting teacher who found success in midlife as a character actress, including memorable turns as the mothers of Edie Falco’s character on “The Sopranos” and Lorraine Bracco’s character in “Goodfellas,” died on Nov. 17 at her home in Manhattan. She was 89.

After establishing herself as a stage actress and director, Ms. Shepherd became well known as an acting instructor — her students included Gregory Hines, Bebe Neuwirth and Christopher Meloni — before she began acting in film and on television when she was in her mido-50s.

In her final film, “The Performance,” Ms. Shepherd played the mother of Jeremy Piven’s character, a Jewish American tap dancer whose troupe is scouted to perform for Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Recently, her friend Carl Capotorio said that Ms. Shepherd had told him, “There are plenty more mothers to play. I want to play them all.”

Dr. Abraham B. Bergman, a pediatrician who was instrumental in passing a federal law to combat sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), died on Nov. 10 in Seattle. He was 91.

In the 1960s and early ‘70s, Dr. Bergman was president of the National Foundation for Sudden Infant Death, a grass-roots group that supported parents who had lost children to what was once commonly called crib death. Although SIDS, as the syndrome became known, was the leading killer of infants less than a year old, its cause was unknown. Parents often blamed themselves, marriages broke up and, in some cases, the authorities investigated for child abuse.

Dr. Bergman’s group sought to destigmatize SIDS, support grieving parents, and raise money for research. Its efforts led to the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Act of 1974, which appropriated millions of dollars for research.

In another groundbreaking piece of legislation, Dr. Bergman testified before a Senate subcommittee about flammable sleepwear. “You senators are in a position to save far more lives than physicians,” he said. In response, Congress toughened and broadened the Flammable Fabrics Act to require more flame-resistant clothing.