They later merged as Mercy-Douglass Hospital, a site that in 2021 was transformed into the PHMC Public Health Campus on Cedar, where Penn Medicine now delivers care through the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Cedar Avenue. She worked on the obstetric staff of Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital and the pediatrics staff at Mercy Hospital - the city's two Black hospitals. Dickens followed her example when, after Dickens's first year at Aspiranto, Alexander left for Yale's School of Public Health, leaving her 27-year-old protégé in charge of the clinic and her father's care.ĭickens still made times to speak at churches about child welfare and cancer education, work at well-baby clinics, deliver speeches advocating for increased tuberculosis screening in African Americans and participate in the Maternal Mortality Conference of Philadelphia. If the patient couldn't pay, she treated them anyway. During at least one visit to a woman in labor, Dickens had to push a bed to the window for light, as the house did not have electricity.Īlexander charged the same $3.00 whether she saw one patient or a family of six. Alexander and Dickens made house calls and did home deliveries. The practice primarily served the city's poor Black community, which came to the clinic for general medical care, emergency visits, obstetric and gynecologic care, and parenting classes. Dickens moved into the home where Alexander's father also resided. In 1935, Dickens came to Philadelphia to work with Virginia Alexander, MD in the Aspiranto Health Home, a six-bed hospital and clinic located in Alexander's North Philadelphia row home. She did her internship at Provident Hospital, a Black institution located in Chicago's South Side, and stayed a year for obstetrical training. In 1933, Dickens graduated as one of three women and the only African American woman in her class. The University of Illinois School of Medicine accepted her, with a state scholarship funding her education. But medical schools rejected her because she was a woman or because she was African American - and in one case, because she didn't have enough chemistry prerequisites. It never occurred to me that there were barriers," reflected Dickens in 1988. "I didn't see a barrier to becoming a doctor. She recalled attending a "so-called White school," located closer to home than Dayton's Black school, and then attended Crane Junior College in Chicago. Both encouraged Helen and her brother to strive toward greater opportunity through education. Her mother found employment as a domestic servant. Her father, formerly enslaved, had taught himself to read and eventually how to read law, but the nature of the times limited him to janitorial work. In the family home in Dayton, Dickens's family set examples for hard work, education, and a spirit to succeed. She also helped bring underrepresented individuals into the medical field and was ahead of her time in imparting lessons of cultural sensitivity to medical students, residents, and colleagues fortunate enough to cross her path, making better doctors out of all. The ripples of her work spread to impact women across the nation.ĭickens achieved many firsts along the way to becoming one of the Perelman School of Medicine's role models and beloved professors of Obstetrics and Gynecology. With drive and passion, she pioneered initiatives for cancer prevention, family planning, and teen sexual health education, and took them to the underserved Black community. Despite economic, gender, and racial challenges, Dickens persevered through every step of her medical training and career. Two landmark events bookended her birth that month: the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and observation of the first National Women's Day in the United States. Helen Octavia Dickens, MD was born in Dayton, Ohio, on February 21, 1909. She didn't set out to become an activist, but her life's work significantly improved the health - and lives - of women, particularly Black women.
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