Vivia Belle Appleton, M.D., spent her early career traveling the globe, working to improve the health of children and mothers. Settling in Hawaii in 1925, Dr. Appleton practiced pediatrics there for the next fifty years, receiving widespread recognition for her medical work and community service.
In 1948, Caroline Bedell Thomas, M.D., launched a long-term study of health and risk factors for hypertension and heart disease. Her research strategy has proved so beneficial that the work she began continues today, and her data has led to the discovery of the connection between high cholesterol and heart disease.
1999: Dr. Catherine DeAngelis is the first woman to be appointed editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Biography
In her role as the first woman editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Catherine DeAngelis, M.D., has made a special effort to publish substantive scientific articles on women’s health issues. The journal plays an important role in bringing new research to light, and featured articles can lead to fundamental changes in treatment. Under her editorship, the journal published a landmark study questioning the benefits of hormone replacement therapy in 2002. She also served as editor of the Archive of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, from 1993 to 2000.
Catherine DeAngelis was born and raised in a coal-mining town in northeastern Pennsylvania. As she grew older, DeAngelis considered working with the Maryknoll Sisters, a missionary order. Since medical school was not financially possible, she went into a three-year program to become a registered nurse, where she “read everything in the library and loved it.” After graduation in 1960 she took a job at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, and later interviewed for the Maryknoll missions. At the interview she was told she would need to take some religion classes, because she hadn’t had a Catholic education. She did not consider this an appealing prospect, and was not sure what to do. Her father said, “You stopped taking orders from me when you were two, so life as a missionary sister doesn’t make sense.” She then talked to her high school chemistry teacher, she told him, “I still want to be a doctor”. His response was, “Why not, then?” When she was accepted in Wilkes University on his recommendation, she went home and told her parents she was going to college.
During her undergraduate years she worked as a nurse and set up an infirmary at Wilkes. She also worked in a laboratory, gaining valuable experience in immunology research. She went on to the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, again doing lab work, teaching student nurses and working in the V.A. hospital medical library to help cover her expenses.
After medical school, DeAngelis wanted to do pediatric transplant surgery, but began with a pediatric residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Working four hours a week at a free clinic in Baltimore, she began thinking about scientific ways to address the general problems she saw there. She had heard about Harvard University’s program in health law and economics, and its community clinics, and realized that she could apply for a master’s degree in public health fellowship with stipend, at the National Institutes of Health. So she earned her master of public health degree at Harvard and worked at the Roxbury (Massachusetts) comprehensive community clinic. She noticed that many patients were not receiving basic care, primarily because of access and financial problems. With a little more training for nurses, she thought, some of these problems could be addressed. To solve the problem, she wrote a textbook for nurse practitioner-medical resident teams, Basic Pediatrics for Primary Care Providers, published in 1973.
Form 1973 to 1975 she worked as a faculty member at Columbia College of Physicians on improving health care systems in Harlem and upper Manhattan in New York using physician-nurse practitioner teams. She then took a position at the University of Wisconsin, where her former chair of pediatrics, Robert Cook, MD was vice chancellor. He suggested she might want to be dean of the School of Health Sciences, but instead, she chose to organize a system for children’s health care, which she did for the next three years.
In 1978 DeAngelis decided to move back East. She considered an offer from the University of Rochester, rather than Johns Hopkins, because she was impressed with the recruitment and interview process she had experienced. She was interviewed by resident’s, not professors, and sent to dinner with one of the residents, rather than with senior faculty. She changed her mind and decided to take up a position at Hopkins after being persuaded by the chairman of the department of pediatrics there. In 1978 she began as chief of the new Division of General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, then became deputy chair of the department, and was appointed vice dean for academic affairs and faculty in 1994.
When she was made a full professor in 1984, Dr. DeAngelis was only the twelfth woman in Hopkins’s 94-year history to receive that rank. As vice-dean, she instituted a range of policies to improve these statistics: 68 percent of all women who have been made professor since the founding of Hopkins received their promotions while DeAngelis was vice-dean. Her success is especially ironic as her application to attend medical school there was rejected.
Elizabeth Karlin was a tireless advocate for women’s rights and health issues. In 1992, she was honored as “feminist of the year” by the Wisconsin chapter of the National Organization for Women. Throughout her career she was an outspoken advocate for women’s reproductive rights.
Born in New York City, Karlin graduated from the prestigious Bronx High School of Science when she was 16 years old. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Antioch College in Ohio, and an M.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School. After working abroad as a general practitioner in Tanzania, she returned to Madison to establish a practice in internal medicine.
In 1990, however, her practice was to change. Her friends, concerned about the lack of local doctors with training, encouraged her to become an abortion provider, which she did after studying with a fellow physician in Madison. As director of the Women’s Medical Center on Madison’s West Side, she offered, in her words, “a full range of medical care and counseling to women who largely have no other access to health care…who least expect kindness, excellence or even cleanliness.”
The mother of two children, Karlin consistently asserted her belief in the value of motherhood and family, while fighting to preserve women’s reproductive rights. “I don’t do abortions because it’s a filthy job and somebody has to do it,” she explained in a 1995 New York Times article. “I do them because it is the most challenging medicine I can think of. I provide women with nurturing, preventive care to counteract a violent religious and political environment. I hope to do it well enough to prevent repeat abortions.”
Through the 1990s, Karlin was both praised and reviled for her public pro-choice stance. In 1992, she was honored as “feminist of the year” by the Wisconsin chapter of the National Organization for Women. At the same time, anti-abortion protestors repeatedly vandalized her clinic. She was the target of constant harassment and abuse. She was forced to wear a bullet-proof vest and hire security to protect her clinic and staff.
Karlin’s involvement with the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy began in 1996, when she became one of four named plaintiffs in the case of Karlin versus Foust, which challenged Wisconsin’s mandatory delay and “informed consent” law requiring a waiting period and counseling for women seeking abortions. Shortly after her death, he Seventh Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals ultimately upheld the Wisconsin law in 1999.
Elizabeth Karlin died in 1998 at age 54, at her home in Arena, Wisconsin, only a few months after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, a close friend of Karlin’s from her days as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, visited her during her illness and was vocal in her praise. Her friend and journalist Molly Ivins called her “one of the most life-affirming people I’ve ever run across.” The University of Wisconsin Foundation commemorated Karlin with the Elizabeth Karlin Fellowship in Women’s Health. awarded to women who train to become leaders in women’s health and women’s health research.
Milestones
1918: Dr. Emily Bacon was the first pediatric specialist in Philadelphia.
1937: Dr. Emily Bacon was the first woman president of the Philadelphia Pediatric Society.
1928: Dr. Emily Bacon was the first woman on the senior staff of Mary J. Drexel Children’s Hospital, Philadelphia.
Biography
Emily Bacon was the first physician in Philadelphia to devote her practice exclusively to pediatrics—the care of children. She introduced numerous innovations in her fifty-year hospital career, including the creation of a “well-baby” clinic, and a counseling service for troubled children. She was also a much-loved teacher and combined her clinical practice with a teaching career at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania for over thirty years.
Born in Moorestown, New Jersey in 1891, Emily Bacon entered Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in 1908. During her college years, she was very active in the school’s social and athletic life, serving as class president for three of her four years, participating in several literary societies, and playing right halfback on the field hockey team. Apparently, Bacon recalled her college years with great fondness. She maintained a strong relationship with Wilson for much of her life, serving as an alumnae trustee and a member of the Wilson College Board for nearly two decades, from the early 1930s to the 1950s.
After graduating from Wilson in 1912, Emily Bacon earned her doctor of medicine degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1916. She returned to Philadelphia to accept a pediatric residency at Mary J. Drexel Hospital, a position she held until 1928, when she was the first woman appointed to the senior staff at the institution. When the hopsital merged with the nearby Lankenau Hospital a few years later, Dr. Bacon was appointed Lankenau’s first chief of pediatrics.
She remained at Lankenau until 1952, and even after her retirement as chief of pediatrics was a pediatric consultant until 1965. During this same period, she was also affiliated with the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP). Bacon accepted a position as an instructor of pediatrics at WMCP in 1919, becoming a full professor six years later. She became professor emeritus in 1953, and retired from teaching at the age of 62.
By all accounts, Dr. Emily Bacon was a well-loved and much-respected teacher, pediatrician, and colleague. She made many contributions to the practice of pediatrics in Philadelphia, including a pioneering effort to establish a ‘well-baby” clinic at Lankenau as well as a counseling service for traumatized children. Her well-respected skill in the field of pediatrics also made her a frequently requested speaker, and she often appeared before parent-teacher groups, nurses and church and club women to discuss issues of child health, nutrition, and preventive medicine. Routinely described as dedicated, unselfish, and fair, Bacon no doubt had a lasting impact on the health of thousands of Philadelphia children, as a pediatrician and as a teacher, helping to train generations of physicians in pediatrics.
1875: Dr. Emeline Cleveland was one the first American women physicians to perform major gynecological and abdominal surgery.
Biography
Emeline Horton Cleveland entered medicine with strong religious convictions and a desire to minister to the suffering. From her earliest years, she dreamed of service as a foreign missionary, but instead went on to a brilliant career in medicine, becoming a highly respected physician and one of the first American women physicians to perform major gynecological and abdominal surgery. At a time when women’s entry into the profession faced serious opposition, Dr. Cleveland was a striking example of women’s capabilities.
Born in Ashford, Connecticut, in 1829, Emeline Horton was third in a family of nine children. When she was 2 years old, the family moved to a farm in Madison County, New York, where the children were educated at local schools and by private tutors. Determined to realize her dreams of becoming a missionary, she taught school for a number of years, saving her wages to pay for entry to Ohio’s Oberlin College in 1850.
Her future husband and longtime friend, Giles Butler Cleveland, entered Oberlin’s Theological Seminary around the same time and the pair began to plan their missionary career together. After graduating from Oberlin, Emeline Horton registered at the Female (later Woman’s) Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1853. The couple married in 1854, a year before Emeline Horton Cleveland received her medical degree. Her husband’s poor health stifled any plans to enter missionary service and Dr. Cleveland set up a private practice in Oneida Valley, New York, to support them both.
In the autumn of 1856, Dr. Cleveland was invited back to the Female Medical College to teach anatomy. The couple moved back to Philadelphia, where Giles Cleveland found work as a teacher. But another illness during the winter of 1857-1858 left him partially paralyzed, making Emeline Cleveland fully responsible for supporting the family. Cleveland remained at the Female Medical College until 1860.
Since Philadelphia hospitals refused to allow women medical students into wards or clinics at this time, it was difficult for them to receive instruction with patients. Dr. Ann Preston, a colleague of Cleveland’s at the Medical College, along with several Quaker women who lived in the area, were firmly committed to both adequate training for female physicians and to a woman’s right to be treated by a woman doctor. They were determined to establish their own hospital and offer Cleveland the post of chief resident. They set out to secure Cleveland the best available training and paid for her to study abroad. In August 1860, Cleveland went to Paris to study obstetrics and gynecological surgery. She earned a diploma and toured the lecture halls and hospitals of Paris and London, studying surgery and hospital administration.
In 1862, Dr. Cleveland took up the position of chief resident at the newly established Woman’s Hospital of Philadelphia, established by Dr. Preston. During the next seven years, Dr. Cleveland developed some of the first training programs for nurses and nurses’ aides in the United States. She also gave birth to a son, who would later follow her into a medical career. She continued teaching at the Female Medical College as well as running a private practice until 1878.
When Dr. Preston died in 1872, Dr. Cleveland succeeded her as dean of the Woman’s Medical College, where she remained until ill health forced her to resign in 1874. In 1878, Cleveland was appointed gynecologist at Pennsylvania Hospital’s Department for the Insane, becoming one of the country’s first woman physicians to be hired by a major public medical institution. That same year, she died of tuberculosis at age forty-nine. Described as a woman of great charm and intellect, Cleveland helped to establish the legitimacy of women’s surgical roles in the face of immense opposition. She also did much for the development of the Woman’s Medical College at a critical stage in its development. Illustrating her commitment to this institution and to her colleagues there, her final request was to be buried beside her friend and fellow physician, Dr. Preston.
Milestones
1932: Dr. Macfarlane was the first woman fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
1938: Dr. Macfarlane started a Cancer Control Research Project at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and established the first uterine cancer screening program in Philadelphia, one of the first in the nation.
1943: Dr. Macfarlane was the first woman president of the Obstetrical Society of Philadelphia.
1951: Dr. Macfarlane received the Lasker Award for Medical Research.
Inspiration
Catharine Macfarlane’s mother suggested a career in medicine. At 16 she began studying at the School of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania and after two years was admitted to the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania.
Biography
Dr. Catharine MacFarlane helped to bring better care to women when she established one of the nation’s first uterine cancer screening programs and actively promoted cancer-screening for women. She was also the first woman fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the first woman president of the Obstetrical Society of Philadelphia.
Born in 1877 near Philadelphia, Catharine MacFarlane was an only child. She credited her mother with inspiring her choice of profession, describing her as woman of “rare wisdom and judgment.” Dr. MacFarlane lived with and cared for her mother until she died in 1957 at age 101.
In 1936, Dr. MacFarlane was appointed to head the Medical Women’s National Association (renamed the American Medical Women’s Association in 1937), and was the first woman president of the Obstetrical Society of Philadelphia in 1943. After co-founding the Cancer Control Research Project at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1938, she went on to help establish the first uterine cancer screening program in Philadelphia—one of the earliest such programs in the nation. Combining her research career with teaching, during Dr. MacFarlane’s extraordinarily long tenure at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania she advanced from instructor in obstetrics in 1898 to professor of gynecology in 1922 and in 1942, research professor of gynecology.
Catharine MacFarlane, affectionately known as “Doctor Kitty Mac,” dedicated her life to medicine as a physician, educator, and medical researcher. In 1893, at the age of 16, she entered the University of Pennsylvania, where she completed a two-year course in biology. Four years later, at age 23, she earned her M.D. from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. She did postgraduate work in gynecological urology at Johns Hopkins University, and during several European tours studied with some of the world’s leading experts in obstetrics and gynecology. Often described as a dignified woman with a formidable intellect and temper, she was a pioneer in the detection and treatment of uterine cancer. Always one to speak her mind, Catharine MacFarlane also strongly advocated women’s right to vote and to obtain birth control, often supporting these controversial causes in public, including an appearance with Margaret Sanger at the first Pennsylvania State Conference on Birth Control in 1922. The central aspect of Dr. MacFarlane’s professional life, however, was her commitment to research and to medical treatment and training for women.
Throughout her career, Dr. MacFarlane was tenacious in her support of medical treatment and education of women. While attending the Medical Women’s International Association meeting in Scotland in 1937, for example, she suggested to a colleague that a periodic pelvic exam for asymptomatic women would be the best way to discover pelvic cancer in its earliest and most curable phase. But her suggestion was discouraged. According to, Dr. Louisa Martindale, the association’s president, few women would consent to be examined for a disease for which they had no symptoms. In her memoirs, recorded in Transactions and Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Dr. MacFarlane returned home determined to prove that women would participate in the preventive care programs she advocated.
In 1942, at age 65, Dr. MacFarlane turned down an emeritus position and instead accepted the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania’s offer to become a research professor, a position she held until her death in 1969.
Recognizing her later success in establishing cancer screening programs for women, Dr. MacFarlane received the Gimbel Award for humanitarian service in 1949 as well as the coveted Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 1951—one of the world’s most distinguished medical research awards.
Dr. MacFarlane managed to find the time to practice medicine, maintain a gynecological practice in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and make house calls on her patients. She even continued to perform surgery into her 90s. In the words of a former student and colleague, she was a woman with “a keen mind, a tremendous sense of duty, a delightful sense of humor, and a superb self-confidence.”
Dr. Edith M. Lincoln, a pediatrician who pioneered the use of drugs for treating tuberculosis in children, was head of the children’s “chest clinic” at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan from 1922 until her retirement in 1956.
Born in New York City, Edith Maas graduated from Vassar College in 1912 with a stunning academic record that won her admission to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She received her medical degree in 1916. In 1917 she became one of the first women physicians to be accepted as an intern at Bellevue Hospital. She recalled later that she was advised to take her meals with the nurses, but insisted on eating with the other interns. She married Asa Lincoln in 1917 and the couple had two children.
After completing her training in pediatrics, Dr. Lincoln was appointed to start the children’s chest clinic at Bellevue in 1922. She joined the faculty at the New York University School of Medicine in 1930 and twenty years later was named a clinical professor of pediatrics.
Many of the pediatric patients that Dr. Lincoln saw at her clinic came from low income families who received public assistance and lived in crowded conditions. In the 1930s, one of every five children admitted to the tuberculosis ward of Bellevue Hospital died of the disease, usually within a year. Most of these children were first diagnosed in the hospital because a tuberculin test was part of the examination on admission. Sadly, the death rate of children with tuberculosis remained unchanged until streptomycin became available late in 1947.
Dr. Lincoln was instrumental in studying the effect of drugs on reducing the death rate of children from a first infection of tuberculosis, often called primary tuberculosis. In 1949, working with grants from the Federal Public Health Service and the National Tuberculosis Association, she found that a dozen children treated in her chest clinic with streptomycin and promizole recovered from tuberculous meningitis (an acute inflammation of the cerebral tissues caused by the tubercle bacillus) and miliary tuberculosis (which spreads throughout the body via the bloodstream), two forms of the disease that had almost always been fatal.
When the drug isoniazid became available, she undertook a clinical experiment that showed that children with pulmonary tuberculosis who were treated with the new drug avoided developing tuberculous meningitis. Before that, tuberculous meningitis caused 60 percent of deaths from primary tuberculosis.
In 1939 Dr. Lincoln was named chair of the pediatric section of the New York Academy of Medicine. In 1951 she received the Elizabeth Blackwell citation given annually to an outstanding woman physician; and in 1959 she was awarded the Trudeau Medal of the National Tuberculosis Association for her early work with chemotherapy for the treatment of childhood tuberculosis.
1978: Dr. Doris H. Merritt was the first woman to chair the Board of Regents for the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, where she was instrumental in establishing the library’s electronic information system.
Inspiration
I was being discharged from the U.S. Navy after World War II and wanted an interesting and useful profession that would allow me to live independently.
Biography
Doris Honig Merritt, M.D., the first woman to chair the Board of Regents for the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, helped establish the Library’s electronic information system in 1978. During her career in university administration, Dr. Merritt coined the term “grantsmanship” to describe the art of procuring grants, and herself brought millions of dollars in grants to the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis.
As World War II was coming to a close in the mid 1940s, so was young Doris Merritt’s two-year stint in the Navy Officer Corps. As she looked for an interesting job alternative, an interesting and useful profession that would give her some measure of financial independence, she decided on medicine. She had graduated cum laude with a Phi Beta Kappa in English literature from Hunter College of the University of the City of New York in 1944, and had to take pre-medical courses from 1946 to 1948 before she was accepted into medical school at The George Washington University School of Medicine. When she earned her doctor of medicine in 1952, she and her physician husband Donald Merritt went to Duke University for residencies—she in pediatrics, he in internal medicine. She was an assistant resident in pediatrics at Duke University from 1954 to 1955, and a fellow in pediatrics from 1955 to 1956.
Dr. Doris Merritt came to be a high-powered fundraiser for academic medicine almost by accident. “I was introduced to administration simply by following my husband, which women were expected to do then. ” When her husband took a position at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland in 1957, Dr. Doris Merritt didn’t find work in pediatrics, her specialty. Instead, she found a new career. Dr. Merritt took a position as an executive secretary for the Division of Research Grants at the National Institutes of Health. Through this introduction to grants work, Dr. Merritt realized she could serve as an effective facilitator, and that she loved to watch the progress of different projects. She devoted the next forty years to “grantsmanship”—a term she coined in the 1960s to describe successful approaches to fundraising for research.
In 1961, Dr. Merritt accompanied her husband to the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, where she was named director of medical research grants and contracts. Instead of reviewing grants applications as she had done at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Merritt directed applications. She was very successful: two of the project grants received by Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) that Dr. Merritt secured in her first year as director were still ongoing more than thirty-five years later.
The following year, when Dr. Merritt became assistant dean for medical research at Indiana University School of Medicine, she was one of the first women in the United States to be assistant dean of a coeducational medical school. Between 1961 and 1978, Dr. Merritt was instrumental in bringing $55 million in new construction grants to the Indianapolis campus. From 1961 to 1997, under her guidance, IUSM research dollars grew from $1.8 million to nearly $105 million.
In 1978, Dr. Merritt returned to Bethesda and was appointed special assistant to the director of the National Institutes of Health for research training and research resources. In 1978, she was the first woman to chair the National Library of Medicine Board of Regents, Dr. Merritt helped create the library’s electronic information system. In 1986, she was named the first acting director of the National Center for Nursing Research of the National Institutes of Health.
Following her husband’s death, Dr. Merritt returned home to Indiana and in 1988, became dean of the Indiana University School of Medicine. She also held positions as interim dean of the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology, and vice chancellor for research and graduate education at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. After officially retiring in 1998, Dr. Merritt served on the Indiana University School of Medicine’s National Center for Women’s Health and the Women’s Fund of Central Indiana. She also designed and created databases for student research in drama, short stories, and biography as a volunteer for the North Central High School.
After 1994, three schools of the Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis designated annual honors, awards, and lectureships in Dr. Merritt’s name. Dr. Merritt also received the National Institutes of Health Director’s Award and the Governor of Indiana’s “Sagamore of the Wabash” citation. While proud of all this recognition, Dr. Merritt said, “In some respects, I have been most touched by the Certificate of Recognition I was awarded by the Washington Township School Board for the volunteer work I have done in the North Central High School Information Center. The staff has been wonderful in allowing me the privilege of working there at my own speed for the past three years, and I will continue to do so as long as I have the energy and wit to function productively.”
Question and Answer
What was my biggest obstacle?
Because my bachelor of arts degree was in literature and philosophy, I had to make up two years of pre-medical requirements.
How do I make a difference?
I helped by advising and mentoring countless individual investigators and trainees and by keeping the administrative rails greased in my positions as dean and vice chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis and as research training officer and first acting director of the National Center for Nursing Research at the NIH. Now I make a difference by consulting and serving on community boards and in a local high school as well as at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
Who was my mentor?
There were no mentors fifty years ago.
How has my career evolved over time?
After receiving my boards in pediatrics, I became involved in federal research administration at the National Institutes of Health, as well as in academic research administration at Indiana University. Opportunities continued to arise that advanced me through the ranks to distinguished university professor with honorary degrees from both Purdue and Indiana Universities.
Inspiration
I have always had a “missionary” side wanting to help others; especially those no one else was helping.
I never really thought of becoming a doctor until mid-way through college. I had no role models and thought that doctors were male and of an unobtainable stature. I became pre-med just to get a broad exposure to many subjects. I found I did well and realized being a doctor fit with my values and personality.
Biography
Dr. Diane Snustad has said: “I give medical students and residents a role model of a human being able to balance full-time academic work, a family, a marriage, and a sense of humor.” Not only has she shown her students that you can “do it all,” she has shown them how to do it well: “They see me dealing with my patients as real people, negotiating with them to customize their care with their wishes and values.” The exemplary care she has given her elderly patients and the example she has set for medical students are two of the reasons Diane Snustad was named one of the “Best Doctors in America” in both 2001 and 2002.
A native of Fargo, North Dakota, Diane Snustad attended the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis for both her undergraduate work in philosophy and for her medical studies. After receiving her doctor of medicine degree in 1979, she began a residency in internal medicine at West Virginia University. With board certification in internal medicine, Dr. Snustad spent the early years of her clinical practice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was there working with mentors Patrick Irvine, M.D., and David Martin, M.D., that she discovered her affinity for working for and with elderly patients. Through the early 1980s, Dr. Snustad juggled teaching duties at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine along with clinical responsibilities at the general medicine and psychiatric units of the University’s hospital, the Pittsburgh Veteran’s Administration Hospital, Benedum Geriatric Center, and the Pittsburgh Skilled Nursing Center.
As the Claude Moore Chair of Geriatrics at the University of Virginia (UVA), Dr. Snustad now serves the Charlottesville community as medical director for both the UVA Geriatric Clinic and the Colonnades Health Care Center. Dr. Snustad’s geriatric practice includes working with both the psychiatric and internal medical components of the aging process. In addition to her clinical responsibilities, Dr. Snustad has conducted research, lectured and written on osteoporosis, cognitive assessment, dementia, urinary incontinence, nutrition in the elderly, and care of rural elderly patients. She is currently researching a new leg-exercising device to determine if its use could help reduce hypertension. After coming to Charlottesville in 1986 as assistant professor, Dr. Snustad notes that one of her accomplishments at UVA was being the first woman in the department of internal medicine to take maternity leave. She is married to Paul Humphreys, Ph.D., and the couple have two daughters.
At the University of Virginia, Dr. Snustad has trained close to a dozen geriatric fellows and taught all six of the university’s “Mini-Med Schools.” A fellow of the American College of Physicians, Dr. Snustad is also a member and reviewer for the American Geriatrics Society and the Gerontological Society of America.
Question and Answer
How do I make a difference?
I give medical students and residents a role model of a human being able to balance full-time academic work, a family, a marriage, and a sense of humor. They see me dealing with my patients as real people, negotiating with them to customize their care with their wishes and values.
Who was my mentor?
I didn’t have one until mid-way through medical school—and never had a woman mentor. My mentors in geriatrics were Patrick Irvine, MD and David Martin, MD.
How has my career evolved over time?
I have gradually come to settle into a job that I feel is ideal for me—practicing primary care and consultative geriatrics in an academic center, and teaching medical students, residents and fellows. My practice is successful and I have a considerable degree of autonomy. I do not feel any significant academic or financial pressures which, I realize, is very unusual.