Dr Margaret Dunlevy
Irish physician and epidemiologist
Category Archives: Activism > Public Health
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Annie Dodge Wauneka
Navajo leader and activist
Grace Kodindo
Chadian obstetrician Grace Kodindo is an advocate for reproductive healthcare in her home countries and internationally. She is also active against female genital mutilation (FGM), drawing attention to the medical dangers of the procedure.
Erihapeti Rehu-Murchie
Erihapeti Rehu-Murchie was a Ngāi Tahu (or Kāi Tahu) leader and woman of mana, and a prominent activist in the fields of Māori welfare and health from the 1970s to the 1990s. She was a long-serving member and president of the Māori Women’s Welfare League, and an acclaimed researcher in the area of Māori women’s health. She also served on the Human Rights Commission and in a wide variety of other public positions. An accomplished actor, singer and orator, she also composed waiata and poetry.
Concepción Felix
Feminist, lawyer, social reformer and human rights activist Concepción Felix Roque founded one of the Philippines’s first women’s organisations, Asociación Feminista Filipina, and one of the first humanitarian organisations, La Gota de Leche, focused on the well-being of mothers and their children.
Cherry Raymond
Cherry Raymond was a broadcaster, journalist and opinion-leader, and a household name during the 1960s and 1970s when few women achieved such prominence in the media. Although she particularly campaigned on women’s issues, and often on topics which were controversial or taboo, her interests were broad, and she played an important role in raising the profile of mental illness in New Zealand.
Elizabeth Packard
After defending her sanity at trial in 1864, Packard campaigned to ensure the rights of the mentally ill as well as those of married women. She publicized the story of her hospitalization at the hands of her husband in order to prevent the abuse and neglect of others vulnerable before the law.
Dr Cicely Williams
Jamaican physician Dr Cicely Delphine Williams, OM, CMG, FRCP was best known for her discovery of and research into kwashiorkor, a condition of advanced malnutrition, and her work against the use of sweetened condensed milk and other artificial baby milks as substitutes for human breast milk. One of the first women to graduate from Oxford University, Dr Williams was a key figure in advancing the field of maternal and child health in developing nations. In 1948, she became the first director of Mother and Child Health (MCH) at the newly created World Health Organization (WHO).
Dr Antonia Novello
A dedicated public health advocate, Antonia Novello made history as the first female and first Hispanic U.S. Surgeon General in 1990. Novello has led several major public health campaigns in her efforts to improve health conditions and access to medical care, especially for women, children, and minority populations.
Amy May Hutchinson
An advocate of hospital births, she wanted more maternity beds in Auckland, improved maternity services ‘to women and girls of small means’, and the ‘utmost attention and relief from pain which science can provide’ for women giving birth. Hutchinson represented the majority opinion of middle-class women’s organisations. She looked to the New Zealand Obstetrical Society as the authority on childbirth, and supported its position that a doctor and trained nurse should be present at the birth of every child.