Dr. Lena Edwards was one of the first African American women to be board-certified as an obstetrician-gynecologist as well as to gain admission to the International College of Surgeons. Throughout her career she served the poor, lobbying for better health care for anyone who needed it, regardless of what they could afford.
In 2001, Dr. Joan Reede was appointed Harvard Medical School’s first dean for diversity and community partnership. She is the first African American woman to hold a position of that rank at HMS and one of the few African American women to hold a deanship at a medical school in the United States.
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.
Dr. Kelly R. Moore has expanded her clinical practice to take on more community issues, in the hope that her contribution can improve the overall health of American Indian and Alaskan Native populations. She is a captain in the United States Public Health Service, and a pediatrician with the Indian Health Service.
Judith Flores, M.D., developed an award-winning bilingual, bicultural asthma management program that reached out to New York City’s Hispanic community in Brooklyn. The program has improved the quality of life for people with asthma and reduced the severity of asthma attacks.
As national director of health services for Project Head Start in 1965, Dr. Gertrude Hunter helped implement the first national comprehensive health program to immunize, offer preventive medical and dental care, and treat any hidden health conditions in preschool children.
Dr. Grace James was one of the first two African American women on the faculty at a southern medical school and the first African American on the staff of the Louisville Children’s Hospital and on the faculty at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.
Assistant surgeon general and rear admiral in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service.
Dr. Clarice Reid began her education in the segregated schools of Birmingham, Alabama, and went on to become director of the Division of Blood Diseases and Resources, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health.
In 1960, during her first month at the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey took a bold stance against inadequate testing and corporate pressure when she refused to approve release of thalidomide in the United States. The drug had been used as a sleeping pill and was later proven to have caused thousands of birth deformities in Germany and Great Britain.