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.
Dr. Audrey Forbes Manley was the first African American woman to achieve the rank of Assistant Surgeon General (Rear Admiral).
Massachusetts’ first woman Commissioner of Public Health, as well as its youngest, where she established the US’s first Violence Prevention Office at a state health department.
In 1988, Dr. Barbara Barlow founded the Injury Free Coalition for Kids.
Important figure in the development of paediatrics in New Zealand
In 1991, Dr. Bernadine Healy became the first woman to direct the National Institutes of Health.
Nystatin, one of the first effective antifungal medicines, was discovered in 1950 by two women scientists: Elizabeth Lee Hazen (1885–1975) and Rachel Fuller Brown (1898–1980)
Alice Hamilton promoted “industrial medicine” and laws to protect employees from dangerous substances in the workplace.
Her simple, rapid method for assessing newborn viability, the “Apgar score,” has long been standard practice.
Medical philanthropist, political strategist, and health activist Mary Lasker acted as the catalyst for the rapid growth of the biomedical research enterprise in the United States after World War II.