By Kate Leo
Since starting my public health classes this semester, I have learned more about what constitutes a great public health success in history. We have briefly looked at an overview of the ten great public health achievements from 1900-1999, one of which is studying healthy mothers and babies. I decided to look more into the history as I was curious to see why it was only in the mid-1900s that maternal and child health was considered a public health crisis. For one of my assignments, I learned about Martha May Eliot who is very much praised for her work in the subject matter in addition to being praised for paving the way for equal treatment for women in the public health field (“Child Health Pioneer Martha May Eliot: A Woman Ahead of Her Time”). I decided to highlight some of my findings from the assignment in this post.
One of Eliot’s first projects was in the 1920s that addressed a widespread public health challenge and involved her in children’s health. She studied rickets, a bone disease in children that causes bone pain or bowed legs (“Changing the Face of Medicine”). She studied cases in Puerto Rico and New Haven, Connecticut, and discovered that with adequate Vitamin D, cod-liver oil, and sun, the disease could be prevented (“Child Health Pioneer Martha May Eliot: A Woman Ahead of Her Time”). One of the defining factors of having success in public health is focusing on primary prevention and basing solutions on scientific and systematic approaches. Eliot clearly did so by finding a way to prevent this life-altering condition and studying the condition first-hand. Martha May Eliot also studied children during World War II, specifically the impact on defense activities on those having to evacuate. She also ran the Emergency Maternity and Infant Care Program for families of servicemen during the war (“Changing the Face of Medicine”).
Her study of women and maternal health became widely known. Eliot was invited to attend the first World Health Assembly that would become the World Health Organization, and she was the only woman to do so (“Changing the Face of Medicine”). Not only did she help develop a critical organization to address international public health, but she paved the way for women’s participation in large organizations. After attending the WHA, she was asked to become chief of the Children’s Bureau, further proving that her work with children’s health and nutrition was identified as a necessary public health crisis (“Changing the Face of Medicine”). Martha May Eliot was a prominent figure in public health and built a foundation for a subject that is widely studied. She went on to win many awards and even became the Chair of the Department at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1957 (“Changing the Face of Medicine”).
Works Cited: “Changing the Face of Medicine | Martha May Eliot.” U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, 3 June 2015, cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_99.html. “Child Health Pioneer Martha May Eliot: A Woman Ahead of Her Time.” News, 18 Sept. 2013, www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/centennial-martha-may-eliot/.
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