Martha May Eliot
Martha May Eliot (April 7, 1891-February 14, 1978) was a pediatrician and specialist in Public Health, an architect of New Deal and postwar programs for maternal and child health." Her first important research — community studies of rickets in New Haven, Connecticut, and Puerto Rico — explored issues at the heart of social medicine. Together with Edwards A. Park, her research established that public health measures (dietary supplementation with vitamin D) could prevent and reverse the early onset of rickets.[1]
Biography
In 1918, Elliot graduated from medical school at Johns Hopkins University. As early as her second year of medical school, Dr. Eliot hoped to become "some kind of social doctor." She taught at Yale University's department of pediatrics from 1921 to 1935. For most of these years, Dr. Eliot also directed the National Children's Bureau Division of Child and Maternal Health (1924-1934). She later accepted a full-time position at the bureau, becoming bureau chief in 1951. In 1956, she left the bureau to become department chairman of child and maternal health at Harvard University School of Public Health.[1]
During her tenure at the Children's Bureau, Eliot helped establish government programs that implemented her ideas about social medicine, and she was responsible for drafting most of the Social Security Act's language dealing with maternal and child health. During World War II, she administered the Emergency Maternity and Infant Care program, which provided maternity care for greater than 1 million servicemen's wives. After the war, she held influential positions in both the World Health Organization and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).[1]
Martha May Eliot shared her personal life in a long domestic partnership with Ethel Collin Dunham, also a pediatrician. Bert Hansen writes: "While Dunham and Eliot are each worthy of individual attention, their shared personal life has such an intimate connection with their careers that a combined narrative better illustrates their close relationship of 59 years. They achieved major professional positions at Yale, at Harvard, and in government, even while they were making careful career choices to maintain the continuity of their domestic partnership. Each was also accorded public honors for leadership in pediatrics, child welfare, and public health."[2]
The American Public Health Association established the Martha May Eliot Award in 1964 to honor extraordinary health service to mothers and children; to bring such achievement to the eyes of related professional people and the public; to stimulate young people in the field to emulate efforts resulting in such recognition; and to add within the profession and in the eyes of the public to the stature of professional workers in the field of maternal and child health.[3]
Awards and honors
Dr. Eliot's service to public health earned her many honors. She was one of the first women admitted into the American Pediatric Society, and she later received that organization's top honor, the John Howland Medal. In 1947, she became the first woman elected president of the American Public Health Association. She also was the first woman to receive APHA's Sedgwick Memorial Medal.
- 1947 Lasker Prize
- 1967 John Howland Award
References
- ^ a b c "Martha May Eliot, M.D." Center for Disease Control. Retrieved 2009-06-11.
- ^ Hansen, Bert (Jan 2002). American Journal of Public Health. 92 (1): 36–44. PMID 1447383.
{{cite journal}}: Missing or empty|title=(help) - ^ "Martha May Eliot Award". American Public Health Association. Retrieved 2009-06-11.
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