February is Black History Month! A special time to honor and reflect the heroes and pioneers, who gave their minds and dedication to benefit our future. When we look at health care, there are several individuals who paved the way for treatments and a better way of living. Let’s take a look at some of these trailblazers.
Daniel Hale Williams MD (1856-1931)
Dr. Williams was the first black cardiologist who performed the first open-heart surgery that was documented successfully. He is also responsible for opening the first black-owned interracial hospital known as Provident Hospital and Training School in Chicago, Illinois.
Jane Cooke Wright MD (1919-2013)
Dr. Jane Cook Wright is the daughter of Louis Wright, the first African American doctor who was appointed as a staff of a municipal hospital in New York City, and then became the city’s first African American police surgeon. Dr. Wright followed her father’s footsteps, became a physician and worked alongside him as the head of the Cancer Research Foundation at the age of 33 years old. Within this role, she’s created a way to test drug effectiveness on cancer cells by using tissues of patients, instead of laboratory animals. Later on, she worked as the director of Chemotherapy at the New York University Medical Center and Dean at the New York Medical College. Dr. Wright also served as the first woman president of the New York Cancer Society in 1971.
Charles Richard Drew MD (1904-1950)
Dr. Charles Drew, who is also known as the “Father of Blood Banking” created techniques to preserve blood that may be stored for later use. We know this technique today as “blood banking.” Dr. Drew was in charge of the first American Red Cross Blood Bank and also created blood donation stations. Unfortunately, due to policies that instructed him to segregate the blood by race, he protested and later resigned from the American Red Cross.
Alexa Irene Canady MD (1950)
Dr. Canady is the first African American woman Neurosurgeon in the United States. She was certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery in 1984, and then became the director of neurosurgery at the Children’s Hospital, and taught as the Professor of Neurosurgery at Wayne State University. In 1989, she was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame and in 1993, she received the American Medical Women’s Association President’s Award.
