JudyAnn Bigby, M.D., served as director of the Harvard Medical School Center of Excellence in Women’s Health and is nationally recognized for her pioneering work educating physicians on the provision of care to people with histories of substance abuse.
Katherine A. Flores established two programs to encourage disadvantaged students to pursue careers in medicine, which 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.
Dr. Kathleen Annette was the first woman in the Minnesota Ojibwe Nation to become a physician and the first woman in the Bemidji Indian Health Service to serve as an area director.
Biologist, immunologist, and biotechnology executive with decades of experience leading teams in drug research and development. Molecules and therapeutics developed under her leadership have become critical treatments for HIV, cystic fibrosis, inflammation, multiple sclerosis, and Hepatitis C.
Assistant surgeon general and rear admiral in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service.
In 1998, Dr. Ileana Vargas-Rodriguez helped establish the pediatric component of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center in New York.
American physician with both an M.D. and a Ph.D. in human genetics.
As a young medical student at Howard University College of Medicine from 1972 to 1976, Janet Mitchell saw patients from some of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. Later, from 1976 to 1980, she served both her postgraduate internship and residency at New York’s Harlem Hospital Center. “Working at Harlem and doing almost all of my rotations in medical school at D.C. General Hospital, I said ‘there but by the grace of God—go I.’ I have ever since devoted myself to the underserved and the most disenfranchised.”
In 1984, Dr. Janice Douglas became the first woman promoted to or appointed to the rank of professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University Medical School.
In 1971, Dr. Jeanne Spurlock became the first African American and first woman to receive the Edward A. Strecker M.D. Award.