Building Foundations for Community Health

Making a difference in medicine doesn’t always look like one grand achievement. For Helen Dickens, MD (1909–2001), making a difference took the form of numerous steps forward over time that created a foundation in education and progress for others to build upon.

In 1934, Dr. Dickens became the first Black woman physician to graduate from University of Illinois Medical School. During her internship at Provident Hospital in Chicago, which was the first hospital to be run by Black staff, she served low-income patients. She continued this commitment to those in need when she moved to Philadelphia to pursue obstetrics and gynecology at Aspiranto Health Home, which was founded by Virginia Alexander, MD, to serve low-income patients in Philadelphia and provide care to new mothers and infants. Dr. Dickens saw in Philadelphia how poverty affected health care and outcomes: for example, when she arrived at a patient’s home to attend to her while she was in labor, she discovered that the patient’s home had no electricity and had to move the patient’s bed to the window to deliver the infant by streetlight.

Much of her later work was inspired by the patients, issues, and conditions she had seen during her internship and at Aspiranto. She conducted extensive research in the areas of adolescent pregnancy and sexual health issues, which motivated Philadelphia schools and health care professionals to develop preventive programs and educational materials to help reduce the incidence of adolescent pregnancy and STI transmission. In 1967, Dr. Dickens founded the Teen Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the first multidisciplinary programs in the United States to serve adolescent parents. The Teen Clinic offered a number of services, including counseling, group therapy, prenatal care, family planning support, and education. She went on to establish complementary educational programs in high schools and advised schools, parents, and health care professionals on intervention strategies.

Her creativity in patient care wasn’t limited to adolescents. She also used her interpersonal connections to reach out to people in community centers, churches, and other organizations to educate them on the importance of screening for cancers. Dr. Dickens was passionate about the importance and utility of routine Pap testing; on top of her community outreach, she received an NIH grant to train general practitioners to perform Pap tests to increase the number of patients who could receive testing.

Dr. Dickens’ dedication to education and service were the catalysts for her innovation in adolescent pregnancy, STI transmission, and cancer screening—and for the work of generations of physicians since.

Learn more about Dr. Dickens.

ACOG’s 2024 Women in Medicine Month series, centered around the theme Innovators in Ob-Gyn Equity, highlights women throughout history who have made novel contributions to their patients, their profession, and their community. Read our other Women in Medicine Month stories to learn more.