University Times

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. today, Sept. 15, at John A. Freyvogel Funeral Home, 4900 Centre Ave., for Elsie R. Broussard, professor emerita of public health psychiatry and clinical associate professor of psychiatry in the School of Medicine.

Broussard, 87,  died of a heart attack Sept. 12, 2011, while driving in Shadyside.

A reception at the Pittsburgh Athletic Association will follow the memorial service.

Broussard earned a bachelor’s degree at Louisiana State University in 1942 and went on to earn her MD degree there in 1944.

She also studied at Pitt, earning a master’s degree in public health in 1962 and a doctoral degree in 1964, both in maternal and child health.

Broussard joined the Pitt faculty in 1967 as an associate professor of public health psychiatry and head of the community mental health program at the Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH) and assistant professor of child psychiatry in Pitt’s medical school.

She was named a professor of public health psychiatry in 1972. She served as an associate professor of child psychiatry, 1974-85, then as a professor of psychiatry, 1985-2003.

She coordinated the GSPH health services program, 1979-83.

Broussard was named GSPH professor emerita in 2002.

A pediatrician and psychiatrist, Broussard focused her research on maternal-child interactions. Among her programs was the Pittsburgh First-Born Project, a longitudinal study begun in 1963. The research focused on how a mother’s perceptions of her newborn impact the child as he or she matures. Broussard continued to follow the infants for decades, continuing to publish on the now middle-aged cohort as recently as 2010.

She developed the Broussard Neonatal Perceptions Inventories, an instrument that predicts during the first month of life infants at high risk for development of emotional and developmental deviation.

“Broussard dedicated her life to studying how infants bond with their parents, especially mothers,” said Ravi Sharma, a colleague in the Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences. “She was an authority on infant bonding and had published a number of papers on this subject. She was still busy working on her research although she had retired years ago.”

Former department chair Edmund Ricci, who had been Broussard’s colleague for 40 years, said she was interested in the prevention of mental illnesses, which she felt had origins in early childhood. Her research on bonding between mothers and newborns strove to understand the process “and what about it could lead to a healthy personality or a damaged personality,” he said.

He counts her among the first community psychiatrists who work with populations, rather than one-on-one with individuals.

Ricci commended Broussard’s professionalism and dedication to the profession of public health as well as her meticulousness in research and ethics.

“She was totally devoted to advancing knowledge about prevention of illness, and about doing public health research that could be implemented by public health agencies. The way she integrated research and teaching and moving it into the community was an absolute model for the way a faculty member in the school of public health should work.”

Broussard participated in teleconferences and made videos to disseminate what she had learned from her research, “to get what she’d learned out into the community and get ideas adopted,” he said.

Ricci said Broussard kept her personal life private. “That was part of her professionalism,” but as a colleague, he said, she was very easy to work with. “She was always prepared in meetings, she always contributed and she was always polite and respectful to colleagues.”

In addition, “she was welcoming to students,” he said, noting her rare ability to balance teaching, research and moving her scholarship into the community.

Among many professional honors and awards, Broussard received the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Lester N. Hofheimer Prize for Outstanding Research in 1973, and the National Mental Health Association Lela Rowland Award for Prevention Services and the Pennsylvania Public Health Association Presidential Award for Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Public Health, both in 1983.

She was inducted into the Omicron Chapter of Delta Omega National Public Health Honor Society in 1986 and was named a Distinguished Life Fellow of the APA in 2003. She also was a Life Fellow of the American Public Health Association; Life Active Member of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry; Life Member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and Life Member of the Association for Child Psychoanalysis.

Among her service to the University, Broussard was co-chair of the University Senate plant utilization and planning committee, 1970-73, and a member of the chancellor’s committee on community relations, 1970-72. She also was the University Senate representative on the chancellor’s task force on administration, budget and commonwealth relations, 1972-74.

Broussard is survived by her son Francis Cassidy, daughter Jude Cassidy and three grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests that memorial donations be made to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, 501 St. Jude Place, Memphis, TN 38105.

—Kimberly K. Barlow