S. Josephine Baker (1873–1945)

Sara Josephine Baker was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, to an affluent Quaker family. She attended private schools and planned to go to Vassar College. However, after her father and brother died in a typhoid epidemic when she was 16, Sara determined to support her mother and sister financially. She chose a career in medicine, and enrolled in the only school in the USA that accepted women, the Women's Medical College at the New York Infirmary, founded by the sisters Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and Dr. Emily Blackwell. After graduating in 1898, Dr. Baker interned at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston, Massachusetts, and worked in one of its clinics in a slum area. She then moved to New York City and set up a private practice. As women were still prohibited from working in hospitals, she took a job as a medical inspector at the NYC Department of Health. She wore masculine-tailored suits and ties and cultivated an image as a tough professional. She examined sick children in the school system and worked to control the spread of diseases that were rampant there. Her efforts led to the creation of a city-wide school nurse program. To reduce the enormous infant mortality rate in the city, Dr. Baker used school nurses to visit the homes of newborns to teach mothers how to take better care of babies and improve their access to pasteurized milk, sanitation, and quality medical care. Soon after, the Department of Health established a Division of Child Hygiene (later the Bureau of Child Health) and appointed Dr. Baker as its director. She made significant improvements to the health of women and children through innovative health reforms and instituted preventive medicine and epidemiology programs in city government. In 1917, Dr. Baker became the first woman in the nation to receive a doctorate in public health, from New York University. After retiring from the Bureau of Child Hygiene in 1923, she became a consultant to the federal Children's Bureau and the USA representative on child health issues to the League of Nations. She became the president of the American Medical Women's Association and wrote four books, including her autobiography, Fighting for Life (1939). Dr. Baker spent much of the later part of her life with Ida Alexis Ross (IAR) Wylie, a writer originally from Australia.