Current Events and Announcements:
2013 Fellowship Awardee
Dr. Ciara Brethnach, Ph.D.
Lecturer in History, Director of the History of Family Project
University of Limerick, Ireland
Bio
Dr. Brethnach has published on Irish socio-economic and health histories in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as contributed to numerous research projects and papers. She has a Ph.D. in history from the National University of Ireland and an MA of History from the National University of Ireland.
Her Research
Her research focuses on how the poor experienced, engaged with and negotiated medical services in Ireland and in North America from 1860-1912. It builds on Breathnach’s wider studies on the family unit and the social history of medicine in Ireland and will help to advance her hypothesis that the rural Irish female was slow to medicalize, not only for socio-economic reasons, but also for reasons of personal agency (Breathnach, 2011a, 2011b, 2012a). Using evidence from Boston dispensary and various hospital records this research aims to show that Irish women continued to present as a problematic group long after the ethnic associations with cholera and typhoid outbreaks of earlier decades had dissipated (Kraut, 1994; Rosenberg 1997).
Breathnach’s study examines migratory waves against trends in medical and social modernity processes. Combining pre-existing hypotheses from migration history and history of family, this study argues that because most Irish immigrants came from pre and proto-industrial households, they occupied a ‘transition phase’ of the social development process and were unfamiliar with modern medicine. Displaced by agricultural transition, and changes in marriage and inheritance patterns, Irish female migration came to outnumber male by the 1890s. Even after economic convergence had been reached in terms of real wages the rural Irish female continued to emigrate in significant numbers for economic, social and cultural reasons. These gendered migration trends have been well explored and established by economic and social historians but the history of their medical acculturation has remained largely ignored. By contrast the strain of Irish immigrants on the mental health system has received due consideration. This focused study of records held at the Archives for Women in Medicine at the Countway Library will be weighed against other socio-economic evidence to establish how problematic groups such as the Irish poor affected and shaped medical care in Boston.
Wilma Siegel Named Foundation Board President
The Foundation Board is pleased to announce that Wilma Bulkin Siegel, M.D. has been named President of the Foundation beginning July 1, 2012. Wilma Bulkin Siegel, M.D. graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1958 and received her medical degree in 1962 at Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. She has had a distinguished career as a prominent oncologist in New York City and is noted as establishing one of the first Hospices in the state of New York, and one of the first to accept AIDS patients.
» More about Dr. Siegel
» Download the Press Release
2013 Call for Nominations
The Foundation for the History of Women in Medicine is pleased to accept nominations for our Alma Dea Morani, M.D. Renaissance Woman Award. This Award will honor an outstanding woman physician or scientist in North America:
- who has furthered the practice and understanding of medicine in our lifetime and made significant contributions outside of medicine; for example, in the humanities, arts or social sciences,
- whose determination and spirit have carried her beyond traditional pathways in medicine and science; and
- who challenges the status quo with a passion for learning.
Nominations are due no later than Monday, April 1, 2013.
» 2013 Award Guidelines
N. Lynn Eckhert, MD, MPH, DrPH Named 2012 Alma Dea Morani Awardee
Dr. N. Lynn Eckhert is currently serving as Interim Dean of the Lebanese American University in Beirut and Director of Academic Programs at Partners Healthcare International in Boston.
Dr. Eckhert is Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health, Professor in the Graduate School of Nursing and Adjunct Professor in Public Health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a Senior Lecturer in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.
» More about Dr. Eckhert
» Download the Press Release
The Awards Presentation will be held on Thursday, October 18 at the Countway Library in Boston, Massachusetts. For additional information on the event or for sponsorship information, please click on one of the documents below. You may also visit our online registration page.
2012 Alma Dea Morani Awards Invitation 
2012 Alma Dea Morani Response Card/Sponsorship Information
Carrie Adkins Selected as the 2012-2013 Research Fellow
Carrie Adkins is a doctoral candidate and teaching fellow in the history department at the University of Oregon, where she focuses on women, gender, sexuality, and medicine in the United States. Her dissertation project focuses on the ways that women influenced the developing medical specialties of gynecology and obstetrics during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She has been awarded many fellowships and awards, including the Colonial Dames of America American History Education Award, the M. Louise Carpenter Gloeckner, M.D. Summer Research Fellowship, and the Western Association of Women Historians Graduate Student Paper Prize.
» More about Carrie Adkins
2011 Brabb Scholarship Recipients Honored at Luncheon
The Brabb Scholarship luncheon was held May 2, 2012 at Chops Restaurant in Philadelphia. Foundation Trustees, Dr. Christie Huddleston and Dr. Gene-Ann Polk hosted scholarship recipient, Dania Joseph, a rising 3rd year student with a Master of Health Science degree. She expressed an interest in psychiatry and a desire to practice in an underserved area. Both Drs. Huddleston and Polk offered valuable information for consideration as she progresses through medical school.
The second scholarship recipient A' Sha Brown, Class of 2013, unfortunately was not able to attend because of scholastic commitments.
» Read more about the FHWIM scholarship program and it recipients here.