The Legacy of Elizabeth Blackwell and AMWA – Event Recording

Elizabeth Blackwell’s 200th Birthday
Celebrates AMWA’s Legacy as an Innovator in Medicine

February 9, 2021 @ 6 pm ET

AMWA joins with Village Preservation to recognize the first woman physician in the US, Elizabeth Blackwell, MD, on the 200th anniversary of her birth. We celebrate Dr. Blackwell’s achievements in advancing the roles of women in medicine.  Her journey and evolution as a pioneering woman physician set the stage for the founding of the American Medical Women’s Association in 1915, 5 years after her death.

What would Blackwell think about where women are in medicine today?

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Join us for a live Panel Presentation with:

Vivian W. Pinn, MD, a lauded AMWA leader who has inspired a generation of women in medicine, and a Blackwell Medal of Honor winner, will share her insights on the state of women in medicine today, drawing from her own experiences. Janice P. Nimura will share stories from her newly-released biography The Sisters Blackwell on the groundbreaking efforts in medicine achieved by Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell. Jill Platner, owner of the building where, in 1857, the Blackwells founded The Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children on the corner of Bleecker and Crosby Streets in today’s NoHo Historic District, will discuss her efforts to renovate this historic site.

The Blackwells’ Infirmary was the first hospital staffed entirely by women. Recent female medical graduates are counted among its interns, bringing guidance and healthcare to the overcrowded tenements in that neighborhood. We will explore the Blackwells’ legacy through the ongoing work of women in medicine.

Learn much more about how the Blackwells’ contributed to advancing women physicians, during this celebratory, panel discussion.

Program Panelists:

Janice P. Nimura. Author of the just-published biography of the Blackwell Sisters, Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell,  Janice is a Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of her work on The Doctors Blackwell. Her previous book, Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back, was a New York Times Notable book in 2015. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian, The Rumpus, and LitHub, among other publications.

Vivian W. Pinn, MD, was the first full-time director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health, a post she accepted after serving as the first African American woman to chair an academic pathology department, which she led as a professor of medicine at Howard University College of Medicine.  In recently accepting the Alma Dea Morani Award, she inspired a generation of women who are following in her footsteps and quite frankly left many of us in tears. Dr. Pinn is certainly an ideal leader to offer her thoughts on what the Drs. Blackwell would say about their legacy of supporting women to excel in medicine. Then, AMWA will showcase past winners of the Blackwell Medal of Honor which is awarded by the American Medical Women’s Association Board of Directors annually.  Read more

Jill Platner, a jeweler, and sculptor will discuss the history of this building and her current efforts to oversee renovations to this landmark location.

Introductions by Nicole Sandhu, MD, PhD, AMWA President and Eliza Lo Chin, MD, MPH, AMWA Executive Director.

Program Moderator:  Ariel Kates, Programs Director for the Village Preservation

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