From 1922 to 1924 she represented the United States on the health committee of the League of Nations. Baker prepared at private schools for Vassar College, but the death of her father put that school out of reach. All Rights Reserved. Baker had to find a way to support herself, her mother and her sister. In 1898, after four years of intensive study, Baker graduated second in a class of 18. She decided to study medicine and after a year of private preparation entered the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary in New York City.
Sara Josephine Baker, (born Nov. 15, 1873, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., U.S.—died Feb. 22, 1945, New York, N.Y.), American physician who contributed significantly to public health and child welfare in the United States. As Baker's program saved the lives of countless infants, she revolutionized pediatric health care in the United States and in other nations as well. She examined sick children in schools and worked toward controlling the spread of contagious disease. Midwives were often unqualified, however, and infant death rates were high.
She interned, or gained practical experience in medicine, at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, an outpatient clinic servin… Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription. In 1901 Baker was appointed a medical inspector for the city health department, and in 1907 she became assistant to the commissioner of health. In addition to articles in popular and professional journals, Baker published Healthy Babies, Healthy Children, and Healthy Mothers (all 1920), The Growing Child (1923), Child Hygiene (1925), and an autobiography, Fighting for Life (1939). As the head of the Department of Health's newly created division of child hygiene, she reduced New York City's infant mortality rate to the lowest of all major cities worldwide. In that post she aided in the apprehension of "Typhoid Mary" Mallon. Omissions? She decided to study medicine and after a year of private I’d venture to say that people know more about her contributions to public health policy and practices than her writing. To deal with the inescapable problem faced by working mothers, Baker organized "Little Mothers’ Leagues" to provide training to young girls required to care for infants. Background and Education. At le… During her term as U.S. representative on the health committee of the League of Nations from 1922 to 1924, Baker was appointed consulting director in maternity and child hygiene of the U.S. Children's Bureau. It was into this world of calamitous infant death and official indifference that Dr. Sara Josephine Baker arrived like a meteor at the turn of the Twentieth Century.
Baker developed measures that dramatically reduced infant mortality in New York City and laid the foundation for modern preventive public health strategies. In addition to Baker’s autobiographical writing, she was an accomplished scientific and lay writer, having authored “50 journal articles and more than 200 pieces for the popular press about issues in preventive medicine, [including] five books” (Parry). https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sara-Josephine-Baker, National Library of Medicine - Biography of Sara Josephine Baker. Baker's Quaker Aunt Abby stimulated her intellectually and instilled in her the courage to be a nonconformist. Baker also started a program called the Little Mothers League to train young girls in the care of babies, since many girls were put in charge of their younger siblings while their mothers worked. Baker decided to enroll in the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary, an unorthodox decision at a time when a woman doctor was likely to be considered an “intellectual and moral hermaphrodite.”[3] Founded by the pioneering female physician Elizabeth Blackwell, the Women’s Medical College was one of two institutions open to women at the time (Philadelphia’s Female Medical College, founded in 1850, was the other.) Born on November 15, 1873, in Poughkeepsie, New York, Baker was the daughter of affluent parents. Sara Josephine Baker was a pioneer in public health care and preventive medicine in the early part of the twentieth century. After retirement she participated in more than 25 committees devoted to improving children's health care. In 1912 she established the Federal Children's Bureau and made plans for creating a division of child hygiene in every state. One of Baker's projects was establishing "milk stations" throughout the city, where nurses examined babies, dispensed low-cost, high-quality milk, and scheduled checkups. Baker died of cancer on February 22, 1945, in New York City. Morantz, Regina Markell, Cynthia Stodola Pomerleau, and Carol Fenichel, eds., In Her Own Words: Oral Histories of Women Physicians, Yale University Press, 1982, p. 30. Josephine Baker helped to establish some of the first programs in preventative medicine and public health. She was the first woman to receive a doctorate in public health. While Baker did not leave records of her sexual orientation or identity, she maintained a close personal relationship with the novelist Ida Wylie, with whom she lived for many years. When Baker was 16 years old both her father and brother died in a typhoid epidemic. An even more significant method of reducing infant mortality was a foster care system Baker founded to give orphaned babies a better environment than that available in institutions. Sara Josephine Baker, American physician who contributed significantly to public health and child welfare in the United States. This background influenced her decision to enter medicine and establish innovative programs in preventive health, particularly in obstetrics (childbirth) and pediatrics (treatment of children). Through this program nurses instructed schoolgirls in the feeding, exercising, dressing, and general care of infants.
A brief exhibit on the life of Sara Josephine Baker, a pioneering figure in the history of public health, Sara Josephine Baker seated at her desk, February 2, 1925 (Library of Congress), Sara Josephine Baker (November 15, 1873 – February 22, 1945). Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... Meet extraordinary women who dared to bring gender equality and other issues to the forefront. Privacy Policy • Terms of Use Unable to make ends meet, Baker took a job as a medical inspector for the New York City Department of Health. • Contributor Guidelines • Contact Us, Sara Josephine Baker: Public Health Pioneer by Karisa Butler-Wall. At the end of the summer the district had recorded 1,200 fewer cases of infant mortality than the previous summer. For 16 years, from its organization in 1912, she was a staff consultant to the federal Children’s Bureau. There she shaped policies for innovative health reform and made preventive medicine and health education the responsibility of government. When New York City’s musical resurgence occurred at the end of the decade, it owed little to the tradition of craftsmanship in songwriting, engineering, and…, New York, constituent state of the United States of America, one of the 13 original colonies and states. Her mother hoped to be a music hall dancer but was forced to make a living as a laundress. Along with five other women Baker founded the College Equal Suffrage League, an organization that campaigned for women's voting rights, and she marched in the first annual Fifth Avenue suffrage parade. Updates? Her Quaker father, Orlando Daniel Mosser Baker, was a lawyer and her mother was one of the first women to attend Vassar College. From overcoming oppression, to breaking rules, to reimagining the world or waging a rebellion, these women of history have a story to tell. Our latest podcast episode features popular TED speaker Mara Mintzer. She interned, or gained practical experience in medicine, at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, an outpatient clinic serving residents in one of the worst slums in Boston, Massachusetts. Sara Josephine Baker (1873-1945) was a physician working toward improving the public health care and reducing infant mortality rates substantially in New York City. In 1911 she organized and became president of the Babies Welfare Association; the next year it was reorganized as the Children’s Welfare Federation of New York, of which she was president until 1914 and chairman of the executive committee in 1914–17. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Corrections? [1] Yet Baker was also “thoroughly trained in the business of being a woman,” planning to attend Vassar, then marry and raise a family. Baker instituted a mandatory licensing program with results so successful that she was able to demonstrate that rates of infection for home deliveries were lower than those for hospitals.
From 1916 to 1930 she lectured on child hygiene at the New York University-Bellevue Hospital Medical School, and in 1917 she was the first woman to receive from it a doctorate in public health. That Baker left a large and genre-spanning textual legacy is interesting.
A pioneering figure in the history of public health, Sara Josephine Baker revolutionized the field of child healthcare in the early twentieth century. Baker prepared at private schools for Vassar College, but the death of her father put that school out of reach. Sara Josephine Baker was a pioneer in the field of public health and an activist in the women's movement. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Since many immigrant women were used to midwifery, they were reluctant to allow their babies to be delivered by male doctors in hospitals. Baker's reception by some of the male students was hostile, but she continued teaching at NYU for 15 years. In order to curb the enormous death rates among infants in the city, Dr. Baker used school nurses in the summer of 1908 to visit the homes of newborns to … [3] Dr. Paul de Lacy Baker quoted in Regina Markell Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy & Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine (UNC Press Books, 2000), 51. She was the first woman in the United States to hold an executive position in a health department. The division (later raised to bureau) was the first government agency in the world devoted to child health. Josephine Baker (as she preferred to be called) was born into a wealthy New York family. Park searched in vain for a year for another instructor, finally giving up and admitting Baker and other women to the program.
She opened specialized clinics and instituted parent training by public health nurses. Her efforts helped reduce death rates from one-half to one-third of infants born in a year. Her work laid the foundation for preventive health procedures that saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of babies, resulting in an improvement in mortality rates from one in six in 1907 to one in 20 by 1943. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. In 1898, after four years of intensive study, Baker graduated second in a class of 18. Baker remembered her childhood fondly, describing herself as a “tomboy type” who loved adventure stories, fishing, and baseball. Among Baker's other accomplishments were a school inspection system and the organization and streamlining of record-keeping procedures for health departments, which was adopted nationwide. In 1915 she was invited by officials at the New York University (NYU) Medical School to lecture on child hygiene for a new course leading to a degree of doctor of public health.
More importantly, however, she developed from the rudimentary program of inspection for infectious diseases a comprehensive approach to preventive health care for children. Another of Baker's programs was the training and licensing of midwives, or persons who assist women in childbirth.