Every March during Women’s History Month, the HHS Office of Minority Health celebrates the extraordinary lives and contributions of great American women who have worked to improve the health and health care of racial and ethnic minority populations. As a woman and a professional who has spent more than three decades dedicated to expanding access to quality health care for vulnerable populations, I have always been inspired by the trailblazing women who forged a path for future generations through their hard work, courage and commitment to improving the lives of others.
This year, we celebrate four health care pioneers who overcame challenging odds to make a difference, and did so in ways that have improved the health and lives of racial and ethnic minorities and all Americans:
- In post-Civil War Richmond, VA, Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler joined other black physicians treating freed slaves who otherwise would have had no access to medical care. Despite protests from the staff, she was accepted at the New England Female Medical College in Boston. Upon her graduation in 1864, she became first African American woman in the United States to earn a medical degree. Following a career devoted to serving women and children through nutrition and preventive medicine, she wrote A Book of Medical Discourses in 1883. She dedicated it to “mothers, nurses, and all who many desired to mitigate the afflictions of the human race.”
- Flossie Wong-Staal was born in communist China and became interested in science after her family fled to Hong Kong in 1952. In 1965 she came to the United States to attend the University of California, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in bacteriology and a Ph.D. in molecular biology. In 1983, she was part of a team at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD, that discovered HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, simultaneously with a virologist in France. Two years later, she became the first scientist to clone the virus, which led to the first genetic map of the virus and aided in the development of blood tests for HIV.
- The first American Indian physician was a woman. Susan La Flesche Picotte grew up on the Omaha Indian Reservation in northeast Nebraska, experiencing the poor living conditions of the Omaha people. While attending Hampton Institute, a mentor encouraged her to attend medical school and she acquired a scholarship from the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs to attend the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. After graduating at the top of her class in 1889 and completing a one-year internship, she returned home to care for about 1,200 American Indian and White patients while pushing for public health and promoting hygiene and ventilation, fresh air and trash removal.
- As a child in New York City, Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias was placed in a class with academically poor students because of her last name. She later graduated with highest honors from the medical school at Universidad de Puerto Rico. Influenced by “the experiences of my own mother, my aunts and sisters, who faced so many restraints in their struggle to flower,” she worked to expand the range of health services for women and children in minority and low-income populations in countries around the world. She was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal in 1991. In 2002, the American Public Health Association announced the establishment of the Helen Rodriguez-Trias Award, in honor of its first Latina president.
In minority and vulnerable communities all across the country, women have served as leaders and catalysts for better health care. They have confronted inequity from behind the scenes, on the front lines and in seats of power, breaking both gender and race barriers along the way as they made history. We salute these women who have come before us, as well as those who continue to improve the health and lives of others.
Last Edited: 03/20/2017