University Times

Outstanding women in the medical professions are the subject of a new national traveling exhibition, with Pitt’s Falk Library in Scaife Hall as the first host.

The National Library of Medicine is honoring women who have influenced and enhanced the practice of medicine — including 10 women with Pitt connections — through a traveling multi-media exhibition titled “Changing the Face of Medicine: Celebrating America’s Women Physicians.”

Two current Pitt faculty members and one Pitt trustee are represented in the exhibition:

• Katherine Detre, distinguished professor of epidemiology at Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health, is an internationally recognized epidemiologist renowned for her research in coronary artery disease and diabetes.

She designed and has led since its inception in 2000 an extensive national study of these diseases involving 2,368 patients that attracted $70 million in funding, the largest combined grant in the history of Pitt.

• Jeannette South-Paul, professor and chair of Pitt medical school’s Department of Family Medicine, is the first woman and first African American to serve as a permanent department chair in the school.

A Pitt School of Medicine graduate, South-Paul has devoted her career to improving the health status of minorities and disadvantaged people.

• Catherine DeAngelis, a Pitt trustee and medical school alumna, in 1999 was the first woman to be appointed editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The exhibit, which runs through Oct. 14 at Pitt, chronicles the stories of more than 300 women physicians during the past two centuries whose work in research, teaching, administration and a broad range of medical specialties has benefited patients, communities and science.

The exhibition also features two interactive kiosks that provide access to the exhibit’s web site (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine), allowing the public to add the names of women physicians who have had an impact on their lives or communities. The public is invited to tell their stories either at the exhibition, or on line using the web site’s “Share your story” link.

To complement the “Changing the Face of Medicine” exhibition, there will be three free public lectures by renowned women physicians, including Detre, who will lecture Sept. 15 on “Bypass Surgery Versus Angioplasty: Which Is Right for You?” and South-Paul who will lecture Sept. 22 on “Addressing Health Disparities Through Women Advocates.”

Hughes Evans, associate professor of pediatrics, University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, kicks off the lecture series on Sept. 8. She will speak on “The Feminine Touch: Women and the American Medical Profession.”

Each lecture is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. in Auditorium 6, fourth floor Scaife Hall.

For more information on the women in medicine exhibition, contact exhibit coordinator Patricia Weiss at 412/648-2040 or pwf@pitt.edu.