Dr Esther Clayson Pohl Lovejoy
Dr. Lovejoy was the first woman to direct a city department of health, the Portland Board of Health, in Oregon and was co-founder and first director of the Medical Women’s International Association.
Category Archives: Activism > Public Health
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Dr Ruth Boynton
Ruth Boynton was a physician, researcher, and administrator who spent almost her entire career at the University of Minnesota (U of M). She worked in public health and student health services at a time (the mid-twentieth century) when there were few women in either of those fields.
Theresa Ericksen
After graduating from Northwestern Hospital’s School of Nursing in 1894, Theresa Ericksen led a life of service as a healer, teacher, and promoter of public health and nursing education. Her legacy has ties to the Minnesota Nursing Association, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Christmas Seals, and Fort Snelling National Cemetery.
Shimeji Kanazawa
Nisei activist who was the community liaison between the Japanese community and the military government in Hawai’i during World War II. She later supported community causes for the elderly like Project Dana.
Dr Sara Josephine Baker
Dr. S. Josephine Baker became the first director of the New York City Bureau of Child Hygiene, the first such bureau in the country, in 1908. In 1917, she was the first woman to earn a doctorate in public health from the New York University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College.
Dr Dorothy Reed Mendenhall
In 1901, Dr. Dorothy Reed Mendenhall discovered the blood cell disorder characteristic of Hodgkin’s disease, known as the Reed cell (sometimes the Reed-Sternberg).
Dr Joanne Harley Lynn
Dr. Joanne Harley Lynn leads Altarum Institute’s Center on Elder Care and Advanced Illness. Previously, she was director of The Washington Home Center for Palliative Care Studies, in Washington, D.C. She was also a senior scientist for RAND, a nonprofit institution that seeks to improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis, and a clinical professor of medicine at The George Washington University, as well as president of Americans for Better Care of the Dying, a nonprofit public advocacy group that seeks to improve Medicare and Medicaid and other aspects of federal health policy.
Odessa Brown
She worked tirelessly to convince Model Cities to develop a Central District Pediatric Clinic in Seattle.
Monica McLemore
Monica McLemore is one of the leading scholars in the field of anti-racist birth equity research, as well as in community-informed methods and policy translation.
Dr Jessie Laird Brodie
American birth control advocate