AWHS History

By Anne Barlow-Ramsay, AWHS Committee Chair

In July 1915 at the second annual meeting of the Medical Women's National Association (MWNA, later to become the American Medical Women's Association (AMWA)) 300 women physicians heard from Dr.  Rosalie Morton who gave an illustrated lecture on the work of women physicians in world War 1.  It was the norm in the United States, as in the allied countries, to deny medical women any active role in the war effort. Dr. Morton's lecture sparked a flame which would see the birth of the American Women's Hospitals Committee.  The name was adapted from the Scottish Women's Hospitals, a successful organization working with military sick and wounded in France.  The Committee had a two-fold mission at that time - the relief of suffering through medical care and the advancement of women in the medical profession. 

Dr. Morton was the first Chair of the new committee and in 1917 Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy offered to try to determine whether the American Women's Hospitals (AWH) then planned to be sent abroad should be for maternity or general service.  Dr. Lovejoy went to Paris in August of that year and joined the staff of the American Red Cross , working  there with the American Fund for French wounded.  When she came back to report to the NMA, money had been raised and a cohort of volunteer women physicians has been registered and the first hospital of the AWH was opened in the village of Neufmotiers, Seine -et-Marne, France on July 28, 1918, immediately followed by a second one.

However, the Armistice in November threw plans in disarray and funds dried up.

Many founders of AWH realized that sickness did not end with the cessation of hostilities.  They declared "The war has been won: now the peace must be won"  So, more money was raised and during the immediate post-war years American women physicians under the auspices of AWH met medical emergencies, established public health services, did their best with typhoid fever, influenza, malaria, tuberculosis, venereal diseases, pneumonia, smallpox, cholera and the many eye and skin diseases which were rife in Europe and no more so in what was then called the Balkans.  In many areas AWH provided the only medical care in the immediate post-war years. 

By 1922, AWH had not only provided service, but had established a number of projects and institutions which local personnel, trained by AWH could continue. 

At this juncture plans for termination of AWH were being considered.  Then the Turkish government displaced to Greece the entire Christian population, burning Smyrna where refugees were waiting for transport and marching the males into the interior for slave laboror execution.  This changed the course of AWH.  With logistical help from the American Red Cross and under the aegis of the Greek government  AWH established services on the quarantine island of Macronissi, an eleven mile barren rock.  Here three AWH women cared for 12,000 refugees, training and recruiting helpers from among the refugees.  

Meanwhile, Dr. Lovejoy, having used her considerable abilities to raise private money, was made president of the Medical Women's International Association, which she helped found in 1919.  In addition she was made chair of AWH the same year and set about almost single-handedly to raise more money and then oversee the spending of it.  In 1922 she was able to attend the founding of an AWH pediatric hospital in Scutari, staffed by American women physicians.   Under her leadership the general principles under which the work continues were formulated. 

Although continuing for some time under the auspices of AMWA, the organization was incorporated separately in 1959 as American Women's Hospitals Service, Inc. (AWHS), but the principles remain the same.  AWHS gives small grants to clinics ignored by the large charitable groups.  The grants are given, where possible, after visitation by one of the committee members or referred to AWHS by friends who have visited.  Originally, all were overseas, at different times in France, Great Britain, Holland, Norway, Finland, Austria, Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Albania, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Armenia, Russia,  India, Thailand, Chile, Bolivia and Haiti.  During the years of the Great Depression AWHS  was also immunizing children in Kentucky, supporting a midwife there and helping a clinic for miners in Tennessee, which continues to this day, although not now exclusively for miners and their families. 

"AWHS does not buy bricks and mortar" as Dr. Alma dea Morani always said.  She  assumed the chair of AWHS in 1967, when Dr. Lovejoy, at 90, resigned.  Indeed, the grants from AWHS are targeted at providing staff for clinics already in operation.  For instance, for many years AWHS, starting in 1961, supplied both money and medicines to Dr. Ruth Tischauer for assistance in running her remarkable roadside clinics for the Aymara Indians in Bolivia.  This allowed her to hire a nurse from the local population.  Several members of the Committee have visited Dr. Tischauer, now sadly no more.   A documentary, called "Doctora" was made some years ago and may still be available. 

From 1967,  AWHS operated from a one- room office in New York City, with a full time secretary.  When the secretary was retiring, Dr. Morani came to AMWA to see if there was interest in again joining the two entities.  This occurred in 1983 and is still in force today.

AWHS Today

An AWHS program that is very popular with the medical student members of AMWA is the travel grant.  Awarded to students who have been accepted into an medicala school sponsored overseas clinic program,  AWHS provides help in paying the travel costs to get the students to their overseas destination.  Students must fill out a lengthy application, have approval of their school's Dean and write a report, if possible with pictures, on return.  Applications are scrutinized by members of AWHS and some very worthy grantees have taken advantage of this program.  Two to three students are usually chosen each year.

In 2009, AWHS has grantees in Haiti, Uganda, Vietnam, India, Barbados, South Africa and  Nepal.  In the US we help out clinics in Racine, Wisconsin, Clearfield, Tennessee  and Washington, DC.  Obviously the economic climate has hurt our loyal donors.  For many years we were able to fund half our budget from donations and half from endowment investments.  Both these sources are drying up.  We will however, continue as best we can as even our small grants enable desperately needed medical care for women and children, according to our mission.

If you would like to help you can donate right now.  We have projects that are waiting for funding in Ethiopia, Angola and Cape Town.  If you are interested we can arrange for you to receive e-mails of reports as they come in from the clinics.   From 1917 to 2013 this small group has sought to make a difference and we believe that we have.