Making Their Mark
Bringing fresh perspectives to the profession of medicine, women physicians often focused on issues that had received little attention-the social and economic costs of illness, new research and treatments for women and children, and the low numbers of women and minorities entering medical school and practice.
As the first to address some of these needs, women physicians often led the way in designing new approaches to public health policy, illness, and access to medical care. The revival of the civil rights and women's movements and passage of equal opportunity legislation in the 1960s led to a dramatic increase in the numbers of women and minorities entering medicine.
Making Their Mark
Caring for Communities
Many early advocates of the rightful place of women in the professions argued that women had a special obligation to those most at risk. By the first decades of the 1900s, women physicians were establishing innovative public health programs and labor reforms designed to protect the most vulnerable members of society.
By succeeding in work considered “unsuitable” for women, these leaders overturned prevailing assumptions about the supposedly lesser intellectual abilities of women and the traditional responsibilities of wives and mothers. [or As the century progressed, the discrimination experienced by women and minorities fueled broad social movements for change. Women physicians involved in this struggle became advocates for those suffering from neglect or abuse.]
Dr. Alice Hamilton
Alice Hamilton was a leading expert in the field of occupational health. She was a pioneer in the field of toxicology, studying occupational illnesses and the dangerous effects of industrial metals and chemical compounds on the human body. She published numerous benchmark studies that helped raise awareness of dangers in the workplace. In 1919, she became the first woman appointed to the faculty at Harvard Medical School, serving in their new Department of Industrial Medicine. She also worked with the state of Illinois, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the League of Nations on various public health issues.
Alice Hamilton, M.D., National Library of Medicine, Images from the History of Medicine, B014009
Dr. Martha May Eliot
Dr. Martha May Eliot worked for the Children’s Bureau, a national agency established in 1912 to improve the health and welfare of American children, for over 25 years. First employed as director of the bureau’s Division of Child and Maternal Health, Eliot went on to become assistant chief, and then chief, of the whole organization. She was the only woman to sign the founding document of the World Health Organization, and an influential force in children’s health programs worldwide.
Martha May Eliot, M.D., National Library of Medicine, Images from the History of Medicine, B09844, photograph by Bachrach
Healthy femur (left) and femur showing the effects of rickets (right)
Children’s bones contain growth plates—areas of soft cartilage that lengthen before being replaced by hard bone. With rickets, the bone's growth plate widens as soft cartilage cells accumulate.
The bones of a child with rickets (right) are too soft and bend under the pressure of body weight. Proper diet and adequate sunlight provide the vitamin D necessary to build strong bones (left). Dr. Martha May Eliot’s work provided insight on how to treat this disease.
National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology
Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias
Through her efforts to support abortion rights, abolish enforced sterilization, and provide neonatal care to underserved people, Helen Rodriguez–Trias expanded the range of public health services for women and children in minority and low–income populations in the United States, Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
Helen Rodriguez–Trias, M.D., JoEllen Brainin–Rodriguez M.D., photograph by Rafael Pesquera
Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias
Dr. Helen Rodriguez–Trias worked to improve access to health services for women and children in underserved communities, advocated for women’s rights, and served as the first Latina president of the American Public Health Association.
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Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias wanted to study medicine because it combined the things she loved the most—science and people. She graduated from the University of Puerto Rico in 1959 and moved to New York, where she married and had three children. After seven years, she returned to the University of Puerto Rico to study medicine. She saw it as a direct way to contribute to society—by helping individuals instead of working through groups or organizations. She received an M.D. with the highest honors in 1960. During her residency, Dr. Rodriguez-Trias established the first center in Puerto Rico for the care of newborn babies. Under her direction, the hospital’s death rate for newborns decreased 50 percent within three years. In 1970, she returned to New York City to serve the Puerto Rican community in the South Bronx. Working at Lincoln Hospital, she led community campaigns against lead paint, unprotected windows and other health hazards. She also taught at City College, raising students’ awareness of the real conditions in the neighborhoods they served. Dr. Rodriguez-Trias saw the critical links between public health and social and political rights, and expanded her work to a broader international community. She said, “I think my sense of what was happening to people’s health... was that it was really determined by what was happening in society— by the degree of poverty and inequality you had.” Working as an advocate for women’s reproductive rights, she campaigned for change at a policy level. She worked especially for low-income populations in the United States, Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. She fought for reproductive rights, worked with women with HIV, and joined the effort to stop sterilization abuse. Government-sponsored sterilization programs led to hundreds of unwanted sterilizations. (Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias) “Sterilization has been pushed really internationally as a way of population control. And there is a difference between population control and birth control. Birth control exists as an individual right. It’s something that should be built into health programming. It should be part and parcel of choices that people have. And when birth control is really carried out, people are given information, and the facility to use different kinds of modalities of birth control. While population control is really a social policy that’s instituted with the thought in mind that there’s some people who should not have children or should have very few children, if any at all. I was working in Puerto Rico in the medical school in those years, the decade of 1960 to 1970. And one of the things that seemed pretty obvious to us then was that Puerto Rico was being used as a laboratory. And it was being used as a laboratory for the development of birth control technology.” In 1979, Dr. Rodriguez-Trias testified before the Department of Health, Education and Welfare for the passage of federal sterilization guidelines, which she helped to draft. These require a woman’s consent to sterilization, offered in a language she can understand, and set a waiting period between the consent and the operation. Toward the end of her life, she said, “I hope I’ll see in my lifetime a growing realization that we are one world. And that no one is going to have quality of life unless we support everyone’s quality of life. Not on a basis of do-goodism, but because of a real commitment. It’s our collective and personal health that’s at stake.” In 2001, President Clinton presented her with a Presidential Citizen’s Medal for her work on behalf of women, children, people with HIV and AIDS, and the poor. Later that year, Helen Rodriguez-Trias died of complications from cancer.
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Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone
Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone brought an uncomfortable subject to the forefront of public debate in her work in sex education. Beginning in the 1950s, when public discussion of such issues was considered highly controversial, Dr. Calderone flouted convention by speaking out in the first place, and as a woman broaching such a topic. In 1964, she founded the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), to promote sex education for children and young adults.
The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone
Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone advocated for sex education, founding the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).
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(Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone) “What is this film really saying? First of all, that sex is normally and properly a part of each one of us, from babyhood on. Secondly, that understanding and acceptance of the normal sexuality of children of all ages is a must for every adult. What children need from us is information to answer all of their questions. This is a must. Just to protect them against the misinformation and wrong attitudes that are all around us.” In the 1950s, an era when talking publicly about sex was taboo, Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone spoke out about sexuality as an inherent part of being human. As Medical Director of Planned Parenthood, she began to change the way that Americans talked about sex. Because of the climate of the time, her ideas were controversial, especially so because a woman was not supposed to mention such things. But her advice was common sense, applicable to both sexes, and she delivered it with medical acumen, ease, and candor. As a physician, she brought a medical perspective to the subject to explain human sexuality as a natural part of life. Planned Parenthood provided contraception and sexual health information and resources for the public. Dr. Calderone also addressed the concept of separating sex from reproduction. She promoted sex as a healthy, normal part of life, worthy of public discussion. In 1964, Dr. Calderone left Planned Parenthood to create The Sex Information and Education Council of the United States. The Council provided information for schools and for young people. Through her own books, Dr. Calderone advised parents on positive ways to talk to their children about sex. Her efforts helped young people gain the confidence and knowledge to enjoy safe and healthy sex lives in adulthood. Mary Steichen Calderone won many awards, including, the Woman of Conscience Award in 1968, and the Elizabeth Blackwell Award for Distinguished Service to Humanity. In 1971, the Ladies Home Journal named her one of “America’s 75 Most Important Women.” Four years later, she was listed among the “50 Most Influential Women in the U.S.” The atmosphere that is so vital today, that allows for informed discussions about reproductive health, unwanted pregnancy, HIV, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, follows from initiatives begun in the 1950s by Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone. (Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone) “Most of all, children need parents who can show love—for each other, and for their children. For in such a home, sharing knowledge of this great and universal human experience can only serve to strengthen family ties.”
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Dr. Dorothy Celeste Boulding Ferebee
Dr. Dorothy Ferebee was a tireless advocate for racial equality and women’s health care. In 1925, in a derelict section of Capitol Hill, she established Southeast Neighborhood House, to provide health care for impoverished African Americans. She also set up the Southeast Neighborhood Society, with playground and day care for children of working mothers. At Howard University Medical School, she was appointed director of Health Services. She was founding president of the Women’s Institute an organization that serves educational, community, government, and non–profit organizations, as well as individual patients.
Ferebee/Edwards Papers, Moorland–Spingarn Research Center, Howard University
Dr. Dorothy Celeste Boulding Ferebee
Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee advocated for civil rights, women’s health care, and public health, and worked to expand access to health care in poor African American communities.
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“As a young girl, I would nurse and help the birds that fell out of trees,” recalled Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee. While her friends played with toys, she healed injured animals. At an early age, she knew she wanted to become a doctor. After graduating fifth in her class from Tufts University School of Medicine in 1924, Dorothy Boulding, like other qualified African American physicians across the country, was denied internships at white hospitals. Determined to find equal opportunity to complete her training, Dr. Boulding took an internship at Freedman’s Hospital in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. One of the few hospitals administered by African Americans, it provided health care to the city’s black community. In 1925, after completing her internship, Dr. Boulding opened her own practice in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. The community was very poorand did not have an ambulance service. Dr. Boulding was determined to bring basic care to those who could not afford it. (Dr. Dorothy Ferebee) “So I learned a great deal about the needs of the negro people in Washington, because most of them were concentrated in Southeast. So it was there that I learned there was very little opportunity for the children. Even though they were in school, they weren’t learning anything. And then it occurred to me, there’s something wrong with this town. Anytime a child goes hungry, and the mother has to work and leave her child home like this we need some place for children. We need a day care center.” Concerned about the needs of families in the community, she set up the Southeast Neighborhood Society, with playgrounds and day care for children of working mothers. In 1925, Dr. Boulding joined the faculty of Howard University Medical School, where she met, and later married Claude Thurston Ferebee, a dentist and university instructor. In 1934, she was appointed Medical Director of the Mississippi Health Project. (Dr. Dorothy Ferebee) “Going to Mississippi was quite an ordeal. In all of those counties, the influential people were the plantation owners. They’re the ones that decided what could be done,what could not be done. So, reluctantly they allowed us to start a clinic. But they would not allow the blacks on the plantation to leave their job of picking cotton and hoeing the weeds—would not allow them to come to any of the five clinics that we had proposed. So here we were, in Mississippi with all the materials that we had bought, the drugs that we had bought, all of the things necessary for the health of young children, and couldn’t use them because these plantation owners would not allow the negroes to come to us. So we had a little consultation, and we said, ‘Well, if they can’t come to us, we’ll go them.’ So it was an educational teaching job as well as a health job.” Despite threats by hostile whites, project workers launched vaccine programs against smallpox and diphtheria throughout poor communities. They also treated venereal disease and widespread malnutrition. Members of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority financed, designed, and implemented the Project for two to six weeks every summer from 1935 to 1942. In 1949, Dr. Ferebee was appointed Director of Health Services for the Howard University Medical School. When she was in her sixties, President John F. Kennedy appointed her to the Council for Food for Peace, and she toured Africa for five months, lecturing on preventive medicine. Doctor Dorothy Boulding Ferebee died in 1980, at the age of ninety.
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Dr. Fernande Marie Pelletier
Sister Fernande Pelletier, M.D., a member of the Medical Mission Sisters (founded 1925), has worked overseas for more than forty years, carrying out the mission of her order in Ghana and offering medical care to underserved populations. Her incredible devotion and service has been rewarded by the Ghanaian government, and in rural communities far from fully–equipped hospitals, she continues to care for those in need.
Medical Mission Sisters
Dr. Fernande Marie Pelletier
Dr. Fernande Pelletier works as a Medical Mission Sister to deliver health care to underserved communities in Ghana.
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Dr. Fernande Pelletier went to Africa in 1961 as a Medical Mission Sister. A graduate of the Georgetown University Medical School, she was thirty years old when she left home to begin her service. Her destination was the city of Berekum, Ghana, where she has now lived and served for over forty years. Throughout her service, Dr. Pelletier has had to overcome language, technological, and cultural barriers. She learned the local dialect, Twi, so she could talk directly with her patients, and the midwives and nurses she has trained over the years. She immerses herself in the local culture, trying to understand the ways that her patients think about their illnesses. Her dedication to her work has been celebrated by the Ghanian Government, who awarded Dr. Pelletier the Grand Medal for outstanding rural medical work. In addition to medical supplies, Dr. Fernande Pelletier provides AIDS education, home visits to new mothers, and training for new medical health workers. Using the Holy Family Hospital Outreach Vehicle for travel, she reaches remote areas without hospitals and doctors, caring for her patients’ needs in any way she can. Dr. Pelletier respects the spiritual beliefs of her patients and concentrates on relieving their illnesses or injuries. She explains, “By our action, we express our religious belief. Not ’I heal you and now you join my religion’... But by action; by healing people out of love and making them whole. That, I think, speaks louder.” Dr. Pelletier continues to serve the goals of the Medical Mission Sisters, making good health care accessible to poor patients in remote areas.
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Dr. M. Joycelyn Elders
Joycelyn Elders, the first person in the state of Arkansas to become board certified in pediatric endocrinology, was the sixteenth Surgeon General of the United States, the first African American and only the second woman to head the U.S. Public Health Service. Long an outspoken advocate of public health, Elders was appointed Surgeon General by President Clinton in 1993.
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Dr. M. Joycelyn Elders
Dr. Joycelyn Elders is the first African American and second woman to serve as the U.S. surgeon general.
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Joycelyn Elders was born a tenant farmer’s daughter in rural Arkansas. At age five, she worked in the cotton fields while attending a segregated school thirteen miles from home. During harvest time, from September to December, she often missed school. She did well enough, though, to earn a scholarship to the all-black, liberal arts Philander Smith College in Little Rock. Making it through college was a family affair. Joycelyn Elders cleaned floors, while her brothers and sisters did extra work in the fields and chores for neighbors to help earn her bus fare. In college, she worked hard and especially enjoyed biology and chemistry. She hoped to become a lab technician. Her ambitions dramatically changed when she heard a talk by Dr. Edith Irby Jones, the first African American to attend the University of Arkansas Medical School. Though Elders had never even met a doctor until she was sixteen years old, she decided it was possible to become a physician, like Dr. Jones. In 1956, like her role model, she enrolled at the University of Arkansas Medical School. Two years before, the Supreme Court had declared “separate but equal” education unconstitutional. Despite that ruling, Elders was prohibited from sharing dining facilities with the other students on campus. In spite of the inauspicious circumstances early in her life, Dr. Elders was appointed Surgeon General of the United States by President Bill Clinton in 1993. In this prominent post, Dr. Elders continued to promote the issues she had been committed to in her previous work as head of the Arkansas Department of Health, where she had been especially concerned with the health of young people and campaigned for the introduction of a range of innovative educational programs to the school curriculum. Within five years, she nearly doubled childhood immunizations in Arkansas, expanded the state’s pre-natal care program, and increased home-care options for the chronically and terminally ill. As Surgeon General, Dr. Elders concluded it was her responsibility to get people to listen and talk about difficult subjects, since only then can change come about. She again concentrated on the health of young people and led the national debate on the prevention of substance abuse, and sex education for teenagers. Some considered her focus on these issues controversial, and she left office after 15 months. She returned to the University of Arkansas as a faculty researcher and was appointed professor at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Now retired from practice, Dr. Elders is a professor emeritus at the University of Arkansas School of Medicine and remains active in public health education.
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Making Their Mark
Making Discoveries
Women physicians, who have often been discouraged from pursuing the most prestigious specialties, nevertheless have seized opportunities in medical research and practice. In some instances, they have brought new expertise to neglected areas of research. In others, they have carved out new roles for their interests within existing specialties.
The breakthrough discoveries in medical research of women physicians benefit all of us, patients and practitioners.
Dr. Virginia Apgar
Virginia Apgar, M.D., the first woman to become a full professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, designed the first standardized method for evaluating the newborn’s transition to life outside the womb–the Apgar Score.
The Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections
Dr. Helen Brooke Taussig
Helen Brooke Taussig is known as the founder of pediatric cardiology for her innovative work on “blue baby” syndrome. In 1944, Taussig, surgeon Alfred Blalock, and surgical technician Vivien Thomas developed an operation to correct the congenital heart defect that causes the syndrome. Since then, their operation has prolonged thousands of lives, and is considered a key step in the development of adult open heart surgery the following decade. Dr. Taussig also helped to avert a thalidomide birth defect crisis in the United States, testifying to the Food and Drug Administration on the terrible effects the drug had caused in Europe.
The Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
Dr. M. Irené Ferrer
As a young physician, Dr. Irené Ferrer was the first woman to serve as chief resident at Bellevue Hospital, where she was given a prestigious opportunity: to work with a leading team of cardiologists who were developing the cardiac catheter. Dr. Ferrer played a vital role in the Nobel prize–winning project, which was also an important step in the development of open–heart surgery.
Marianne Legato, M.D.
Dr. M. Irené Ferrer
Dr. Irené Ferrer helped develop the cardiac catheter and was the first woman chief resident at Bellevue Hospital, Columbia University.
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As a young physician, Dr. Irené Ferrer was the first woman to serve as chief resident at Bellevue Hospital, where she was given a prestigious opportunity: to work with a leading team of cardiologists who were developing the cardiac catheter. Had it not been for the lack of male candidates during World War II, it is unlikely that a woman physician would have been given such a chance. But Dr. Ferrer played a vital role in the project. The catheter was an important step toward open-heart surgery and earned the team a Nobel Prize in 1956. Dr. Ferrer also collaborated with IBM to make computerized interpretation of electrocardiograms possible for the first time. From 1953 to 1986, she was director of the Electrocardiographics Department at Doctors Hospital. Since 1986, she has served as an honorary consultant at Presbyterian and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt and is professor emeritus at Columbia University. Special among her many honors, is the M. Irené Ferrer Professorship in Women’s Health and Gender-specific Medicine at Columbia University, established in her name by the Partnership for Women’s Health founded and directed by Dr. Marianne Legato. Dr. Marianne Legato was one of the many younger physicians Dr. Irené Ferrer mentored in an extraordinary way throughout her career. When Marianne Legato left medical school because she could not afford the tuition, Dr. Ferrer convinced the Dean to let Legato return and paid for the rest of her education. (Dr. Marianne Legato): “And Dr. Ferrer herself went back and personally called on the Dean of NYU and said, ‘I’m gonna pay for this, young woman’s education. I will guarantee a good performance, and I want you to take her back’, which he did. After that I became really a member of the Ferrer family, and they were a wonderful, wonderful force in my own life and in my own development. It was a wonderful family to which I had sort of been added, and they really made my career possible.” Dr. Ferrer’s contribution to the development of the cardiac catheter and the compelling example she gave to medical students was based on her extraordinary relationship with her patients. (Dr. Marianne Legato): “She became devoted to many of her patients, whom she dearly loved. Her love of patients was really remarkable and one of the things about her that made her so engaging as a role model for us. So that combination of intellectual brilliance and real love of the patient was sort of a winning combination for those of us who were lucky enough to be her students.”
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Dr. Marilyn Hughes Gaston
Marilyn Hughes Gaston, M.D., faced poverty and prejudice as a young student, but was determined to become a physician. She has dedicated her career to medical care for poor and minority families, and campaigns for health care equality for all Americans. Her 1986 study of sickle–cell disease led to a nationwide screening program to test newborns for immediate treatment, and she was the first African American woman to direct a public health service bureau (the Bureau of Primary Health Care in the United States Department of Health and Human Services).
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Dr. Marilyn Hughes Gaston
Dr. Marilyn Hughes Gaston did important research into sickle–cell disease and became the first African American woman to direct a bureau of the U.S. Public Health Service.
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One day I was in the living room with my mother. I grew up in the projects, which is what used to be called low-income housing for poor people. And we only had three small rooms, and that day she fainted in the living room. And I had no idea what was wrong. It was very frightening to me, and back then we didn’t have 911 and so I didn’t really know what to do. But the long and short of this is that she had cancer of the cervix. We were poor, we were uninsured, she was not getting health care. And from that point on, I knew that I wanted to do something to change that situation. At that time there were not many women in medicine. There certainly weren’t many African Americans. So I had no role models, and I had no encouragement to go into medicine. My counselors all said, oh, no, don’t worry about that. You’ll never get admitted as a woman. You’ll never get admitted as an African American, or as an African American woman, and besides, you’re too poor to go. You know, you’ll never have the money. But the motivation—I knew I really wanted to do this. And I had wonderful mentors that said, don’t let your dreams go. And I guess in all fairness, back then, it did seem like an impossible dream at the time. So that these issues were very clear early on to me, and they have remained prominent in my career. And I have spent a career trying to change this, and trying to get health care to disadvantaged, underserved people throughout the nation. I spent some time at the National Institutes of Health. And one of the projects that I did while I was there was working with sickle cell disease, especially looking at the problem that babies with sickle cell disease die very suddenly—especially they’re at risk in the first three years of life. I led a study where we looked at can’t we prevent this? If by giving babies penicillin prophylactically, before they get the fever, before they get the infection—can’t we save some lives? This study was so successful we stopped it midway—because the results were so compelling. The babies that got the penicillin prophylactically definitely did not have the infections, and it was a study that saved lives. And it is saving lives now. Worldwide. You know, because sickle cell disease is a worldwide problem. I always tell students that your heroes and your sheroes are not just in the history books, they’re not just on TV, but they’re all around you. And to look for them, and to ask them to mentor you. Don’t just passively and say, oh, I wish I could have that person, ask them. And I always remind them, you know, that they’ll always say yes. Because we’re always so flattered, and we say, oh, yes. I would be glad to be your mentor.
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Dr. Janet Davison Rowley
In the early 1970s, Dr. Janet Rowley identified a process of “translocation,” or the exchange of genetic material between chromosomes in patients with leukemia. This discovery, along with Dr. Rowley’s subsequent work on chromosomal abnormalities, has revolutionized the medical understanding of the role of genetic exchange and damage in causing disease.
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Dr. Janet Davison Rowley
Dr. Janet Davison Rowley identified the translocation of chromosomes as the cause of leukemia and other cancers.
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In the 1970s, Dr. Janet Rowley brought a new understanding to the role of genetics in disease when she demonstrated that the translocation of chromosomes played a significant role in some cancers. A dedicated student, she received a scholarship to the University of Chicago when she was fifteen years old, and completed the last two years of high school and the first two years of college in an accelerated program of study at the University. She stayed on to complete her pre-medical training and attend the medical school and graduated with an M.D. degree in 1948. She married Donald Rowley, also a physician, the day after graduating from medical school. For twenty years, Dr. Rowley chose to work part-time, in order to be with her children. When the youngest was twelve, she turned to full-time research. She became interested in genetics while working at the Dr. Julian Levison Foundation, a clinic for children with developmental disabilities. In 1961, funded by the National Institutes of Health, she traveled to Oxford, England, to study chromosomes at a radiobiology laboratory. There, she investigated the pattern of DNA replication in normal and abnormal human chromosomes. A year later, at the end of the project, Dr. Rowley returned to the University of Chicago to continue her research. In the early 1970s, she brought a new perspective to the understanding of cancer by demonstrating that the abnormal chromosome implicated in certain types of leukemia was also involved in a translocation, in some cases. By 1990, over seventy chromosomal translocations had been identified across different types of cancer. Today, Dr. Rowley continues her research at the University of Chicago. She holds the position of the Blum-Riese Distinguished Service Professor, and serves as the Interim Deputy Dean for Science. In 1998, Dr. Janet Rowley was awarded the prestigious Lasker Award for her work on translocation and cancer.
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Dr. Katherine M. Detre
Dr. Katherine M. Detre has been named a distinguished professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health, in recognition of her many achievements. A leading expert in epidemiological analysis, she has designed and led large-scale health studies undertaken across the country.
Katherine Maria Drechsler Detre, M.D., M.P.H., Dr.P.H.
Dr. Katherine M. Detre
Dr. Katherine M. Detre was a leading epidemiologist, spearheading large–scale health studies.
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Dr. Katherine Detre is a research leader in large-scale studies investigating disease and risk factors across populations. She grew up in Budapest, Hungary during the Nazi occupation in World War II. To cope with the loss of some of her closest family members, she devoted herself to her studies. In Budapest, she trained at Pazmany Peter Medical School. In 1949, she received an International Student Service Award to study in Canada. Three years later, she received her medical degree from Queen’s University Medical School in Ontario, and followed that with a Residency in Internal Medicine at Queen Mary Veterans Hospital. Shortly after, she came to the United States and married Dr. Thomas Detre. In 1956, she moved to Yale University where she specialized in Biometry, the application of statistics to the biological sciences. In 1960, Dr. Katherine Detre traveled to Hiroshima, Japan to study heart disease. Returning to Yale, she earned a Master of Public Health Degree in 1964, and a doctorate in 1967. Today, Dr. Detre serves as a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2000, she was awarded a major grant for an expansive study of coronary artery disease and diabetes. The research spans forty areas nationwide, and includes three thousand patients. Recently, she received the highest honor awarded by the University; that of “Distinguished Professor.” The prestigious title honors her “extraordinary, internationally-recognized, scholarly achievement.”
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Dr. Ruth E. Dayhoff
Ruth E. Dayhoff is at the forefront of medical informatics. As the medical technologies used to diagnose disease have become more complex, corresponding new information systems have been developed to analyze, store, and present the new types of data. Dr. Dayhoff followed her mother, Dr. Margaret Oakley Dayhoff, into the field she pioneered in the 1960s, heading the VistA Imaging Project at the Department of Veterans Affairs—a unique, innovative system that will eventually be implemented in all VA medical centers across the United States.
Ruth E. Dayhoff, M.D.
Dr. Ruth E. Dayhoff
Dr. Ruth E. Dayhoff is a leader in the field of medical informatics, heading the VistA Imaging Project at the Department of Veteran Affairs.
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Dr. Ruth E. Dayhoff I had been interested for a long time in the use of computers in medicine. I felt that by bringing a technology into medicine that could be used by many, many doctors, I could make a bigger difference than I would as a single practicing physician. It was difficult because I had to actually persuade people that computers were important, and that they needed a physician to help them with medical computing—that I wasn’t just a programmer. I also had a job working on medical databases, the sorts of databases that would hold patients’ information. And I began to think that wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could combine both the database technology and the image technology into one system, so that you wouldn’t have to store your images on tapes with labels, or on disks, that you couldn’t find what you needed, that it would be linked together. You’d just check the database and it would show you the image. So this idea further developed when I visited the VA (Veterans Affairs) Medical Center and the doctors looked at the system and said, “Wow, this would really help us in the hospital.” So that was the beginning of the VISTA Imaging Project. The VISTA Imaging System is an integrated computer system that combines images with patient records in an online system. The software runs on workstations throughout the medical center, providing physicians with the information that they need to treat their patients. And it’s actually running in over a hundred hospitals across the country today. They started using the system on the wards. When they were treating a patient they found that by looking at an image, they had a sense of the urgency. For instance, if they saw a vessel in the heart that was 90 percent occluded, 90 percent didn’t tell them very much. But when they saw the image they could realize the impact that the problem was having on the patient. They could even show the image to the patient and explain to them what the problem was, then let the patient be part of the decision making process. So they were really very enthusiastic about it. It was very important to work with people who were taking the system and putting it into their process of practicing medicine, and in some cases changing the process to take advantage of the technology. And that’s really what we want to do, bringing the technology to medicine.
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Making Their Mark
Enriching Medical Education
Many patients find that doctors from their own communities are better able to understand their concerns. Because the women physicians who train future physicians recognize the value of diverse perspectives, they are developing innovative teaching strategies and programs to attract students from many backgrounds to all specialties. To help students succeed in medical school, women physicians act as mentors, advisors, and role models.
Women physicians are enlarging the base of students who aspire to careers in medicine, as well as expanding the skills that all medical students take into successful practice.
Dr. Katherine A. Flores
Katherine A. Flores established two programs to encourage disadvantaged students to pursue careers in medicine: the Sunnyside High School Doctor’s Academy and the middle school Junior Doctor’s Academy. These programs provide academic support and health science enrichment to young people who might not otherwise be successful in their educational experiences—or be thinking about medical careers.
Katherine A. Flores, M.D.
Dr. Linda Dairiki Shortliffe
Dr. Linda M. Dairiki Shortliffe built a successful career in the relatively new field of pediatric urology when very few women surgeons were doing such work. Since 1988, she has been at the Stanford University School of Medicine Medical Center and Packard Children’s Hospital as chief of pediatric urology. Since 1993, she has also been director of the Urology Residency Program at Stanford, and has been successful in recruiting more women physicians to her specialty. She noted that the numbers have grown rapidly; when she got her board certification in urology in 1983, there were only fifteen women urologists in the U.S. Now there are more than two hundred.
Linda M. Dairiki Shortliffe, M.D.
Dr. Paula L. Stillman
While teaching pediatrics at the University of Arizona in the 1970s, Paula Stillman needed a reliable way to evaluate her students’ clinical competence. Her solution was to train and use “patient instructors” or “standardized patients.” Stillman’s system is a competency based program, Objective Structured Clinical Evaluations (OSCE), developed to assess medical students, foreign medical graduates, and U.S. doctors in danger of losing their licenses. Her system has also been adopted by medical schools in China.
Paula L. Stillman, M.D.
Dr. Paula L. Stillman
Dr. Paula L. Stillman developed a tool that is used to evaluate the clinical competence of medical students, foreign medical graduates, and U.S. doctors in danger of losing their licenses.
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Transcript
I faced my first obstacle the first day of medical school, and I remember sitting with three men in my class around a cadaver, as part of a gross anatomy course. And one of the men said to me, “You took the place of one of my friends, and because you’re here, he didn’t get into medical school. And this is not a place for women. Women should be home and taking care of the house.” So that was an introduction to medical school. And what I decided after that was that I was going to work very hard and become a very good student, and try to amount to something with my career, so that I wouldn’t feel I was taking anybody’s place but I was there rightfully, on my own. Before we developed the standardized patient concept, the evaluation of clinical skills was very subjective. Students were either good or not good. They would occasionally be observed by an attending physician, but there wasn’t a reproducible, reliable, valid way of assessing these skills and documenting whatever weaknesses existed, and then providing corrective feedback and education to the student. This technique allowed students to be compared to an absolute standard, and to have individualized feedback, and multiple observations by experienced people. I was motivated to create this method of teaching and evaluating because I wanted to make sure that there was an opportunity for students and residents to really learn these very critical clinical skills, and not perpetuate mistakes. I wanted somebody who was knowledgeable to be able to provide immediate feedback to them, and tell them what they did well, what they didn’t do well, and make sure that they did it better the next time. When I went to medical school there were very few career paths that were open to women, and most of the women in my class went into pediatrics because it was very acceptable for us to do that. The other acceptable field at that time was psychiatry. Young women today who go into medicine can do anything. They can be surgeons, they can do whatever they want to do, and they have lots of options, which we didn’t have so many years ago.
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Dr. Edithe J. Levit
In 1986, The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) bestowed their Special Recognition Award on Dr. Edithe J. Levit, the first woman president and CEO of a national medical association, the National Board of Medical Examiners. Dr. Levit introduced new technologies and strategies for the examination of medical students, spearheading change to improve standards. Carefully managing the needs of both medical schools and examiners, she promoted dynamic changes that included the introduction of audiovisual tools, computer–based exams, and the first self–assessment test of the American College of Physicians.
Edithe J. Levit, M.D
Dr. Edithe J. Levit
Dr. Edithe J. Levit established new ways to evaluate doctors’ clinical competence and was the first woman president of a national medical association, the National Board of Medical Examiners.
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Dr. Edithe J. Levit became the first woman president and CEO of a national medical association when she took over the leadership of the National Board of Medical Examiners. The Board was founded in 1915 to create national standards for medical licensing and education. Dr. Levit was responsible for making sure that the board kept up with changing times and the most useful innovations that could help measure students’ abilities. She was hired in the 1960s as one of the board’s first full-time medical professionals. Over the decades, she instituted creative innovations that have revolutionized the way medical students are evaluated. Among her many innovations were PMPs... or “Patient Management Problems.” They were designed to test how well medical students make decisions while examining and taking the history of a patient. PMPs became a highly effective way to test all students on the same skills, and hold them to the same standards. Dr. Levit later introduced computer-based testing, audiovisual tools such as films of meetings with patients, and the first self-assessment test of the American College of Physicians. Dr. Levit was successful in ushering in such sweeping changes by consistently proving their efficacy, and eloquently justifying a new approach. Within the first ten years, she rose through the ranks and in 1977, became President and CEO of the National Board of Medical Examiners. In 1986, Dr. Levit received the first ever Honorary Resolution from the American Medical Association’s Resident Physician Section for her commitment to the highest standards in medical education. She also was honored with a Special Recognition Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges. As Dr. Levit recalls, “I spent the last 25 years of my career with the National Board of Medical Examiners... those years were the most stimulating, creative, and rewarding time of my professional life.”
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Dr. Rita Charon
As director of the program in humanities and medicine and the clinical skills assessment program at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, Rita Charon, M.D., developed an innovative new teaching method. The “parallel chart” system brings literature and medicine together to improve the doctor–patient relationship, and forms part of the only narrative competency course in a United States medical school.
Rita Charon, M.D., M.A., Ph.D.
Dr. Rita Charon
Dr. Rita Charon pioneered a form of medical education that incorporates literature to help clinicians better understand the patient experience.
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Dr. Edithe J. Levit became the first woman president and CEO of a national medical association when she took over the leadership of the National Board of Medical Examiners. The Board was founded in 1915 to create national standards for medical licensing and education. Dr. Levit was responsible for making sure that the board kept up with changing times and the most useful innovations that could help measure students’ abilities. She was hired in the 1960s as one of the board’s first full-time medical professionals. Over the decades, she instituted creative innovations that have revolutionized the way medical students are evaluated. Among her many innovations were PMPs... or “Patient Management Problems.” They were designed to test how well medical students make decisions while examining and taking the history of a patient. PMPs became a highly effective way to test all students on the same skills, and hold them to the same standards. Dr. Levit later introduced computer-based testing, audiovisual tools such as films of meetings with patients, and the first self-assessment test of the American College of Physicians. Dr. Levit was successful in ushering in such sweeping changes by consistently proving their efficacy, and eloquently justifying a new approach. Within the first ten years, she rose through the ranks and in 1977, became President and CEO of the National Board of Medical Examiners. In 1986, Dr. Levit received the first ever Honorary Resolution from the American Medical Association’s Resident Physician Section for her commitment to the highest standards in medical education. She also was honored with a Special Recognition Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges. As Dr. Levit recalls, “I spent the last 25 years of my career with the National Board of Medical Examiners... those years were the most stimulating, creative, and rewarding time of my professional life.”
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Dr. Barbara Bates
Barbara Bates further developed the role of the nurse–practitioner, and wrote a guide to patient history–taking that has become the standard text for health practitioners and medical students. Her book, Guide to Physical Examination and History Taking, first published in 1974, has been published in several revised editions and includes a twelve–part video supplement, A Visual Guide to Physical Examination.
Barbara Bates, 1990
Joan E. Lynaugh, Ph.D.
Dr. Barbara Bates
Dr. Barbara Bates wrote Guide to Physical Examination and History Taking, a standard text for health practitioners, and helped to develop the role of the nurse practitioner.
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Transcript
Dr. Barbara Bates changed how medical professionals learn the skills of physical examination and diagnosis. And, she developed the role of Nurse-Practitioners. At the University of Rochester in the 1970’s, she came to think that special training could prepare nurses to share with doctors some of the responsibilities of patient care. She also became particularly interested in how physicians are trained to diagnose patients. As she taught the skills of physical examination and clinical thinking, she realized the standard teaching text used by students was not user-friendly. She began meeting with a group of ten nurses and five physicians. They called themselves “The Clandestine Group,” and they worked to completely re-think the teaching guides. The result of their efforts was a hand-drawn, informative, and easy-to-use text for nurse-practitioner students. The book’s organization was based on the popular bird-watching guide by Roger Tory Peterson. Introductory chapters addressed interview techniques, taking notes on health history, common and important symptoms, and assessment of mental health. Specific chapters also made it easy to look up anatomy and physiology. Techniques for physical exams were described in detail. The first edition of Dr. Bates’s “Guide to Physical Examinations and History Taking” was published in 1974. Since then it has become a standard textbook for nursing and medical training programs.
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Dr. Barbara Ross-Lee
Barbara Ross–Lee, D.O., has worked in private practice, for the U.S. Public Health Service, and on numerous committees, and in 1993 was the first African American woman to be appointed dean of a United States medical school.
Barbara Ross–Lee, M.A., D.O.
Dr. Barbara Ross-Lee
Dr. Barbara Ross–Lee was the first African America woman to be appointed dean of a U.S. medical school.
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Transcript
A lot of the obstacles that I faced growing up were based upon things that I can’t change, the fact that I’m a minority and a female. When you grow up as a poor, black female in this society, certainly at that time, you’re never that confident that you will achieve your dreams. You just want to be successful at whatever direction you take. And you tend to run a broken-field course. There’s no straight path to where you want to get to, because the opportunities were never there in kind of a laid-out fashion for you. It was quite an experience to live in the segregated South. You’d go to movie theaters and you had to sit in the balcony, you couldn’t sit downstairs. We could not utilize the library, so I couldn’t read, and I was already an avid reader. But the worst part I think about it was the way in which you were demeaned when you went into public facilities. That you couldn’t drink out of faucets, and you couldn’t go to bathrooms, and the kind of stern, controlled training that my mother and my aunt at the time gave us—to never allow yourself to be so vulnerable that you have to demean yourself to utilize these facilities. And I saw a lot of things happen to people that could have been prevented. And I saw a lot of hopelessness as it related to health care that should not be allowed to exist. And so to a large extent, when I got the opportunity to go back to medical school, it was this population that I wanted to address. The ones that I can make a difference with. I think that experience in the South began to formulate this resolve, this personal resolve that I would never let the external environment define who I was. When I became the dean of Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine the media notified me that I was the first African American dean of an American medical school. It caught me off guard. I had no idea. To think that in the late 90s, that we’re still looking at women and at minorities as being “first,” it caused me to pause, and to be somewhat disappointed. But it also immediately then meant that I had to take the position seriously, and really utilize it to keep the doors open for other women, and for other minorities. Because clearly there weren’t enough of us, if I happened to be the first.
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