Deborah Prothrow-Stith

Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith (b. 1954) is the Associate Dean for Faculty Development and adjunct professor of Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. In 1987 she became the first female and youngest Commissioner of Public Health for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Early life

Prothrow-Stith was born On February 6, 1954 in Marshall, Texas to Percy and Mildred Prothrow but was primary raised in middle-class Atlanta, GA. Her father, Percy, worked for Atlanta Life, then one of two black-owned insurance companies in the South. She finished high school in Houston, TX attending predominantly white Therrell High. Though actively recruited by several ivy-league universities, she chose Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, for her undergraduate education and earned a degree in mathematics. ^[1] Following her graduation from Spelman in 1975, she obtained an M.D. from Harvard University Medical School in 1979.^[2]

Career

Dr. Prothrow-Stith is a nationally recognized public health leader. As a physician working in inner-city Boston, she broke new ground with her efforts to have youth violence defined as a public health problem; not just a criminal justice issue. Her passion for prevention was not satisfied with the emergency room work of “stitching people up and sending them out.” She turned to public health and, with others, created a social movement to prevent violence that has had an impact on Boston and the nation. ^[3]

After completing her residency in 1982, Dr. Prothrow-Stith began to analyze violence as a health problem and determined that the best way to address the issue was by applying a public educational strategy, as has been done to reduce cigarette smoking and drunk driving. She has appeared on numerous nationally broadcast TV and radio programs and in print, explaining how families, schools, and communities can rein in the problem. Today, her Violence Prevention Curriculum for Adolescents is used in schools in all fifty states and abroad. Shortly after her residency, she took a teaching position at Boston University School of Medicine and became a staff physician at Boston City Hospital. She began to devote clinical hours in the Adolescent Clinic of the Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center in Dorchester, a low-income section of Boston. From 1982 to 1996 (taking a sabbatical from 1987 to 1990), she treated teenagers for everything from sore throats to pregnancies, drug abuse and suicide attempts.

In 1987, Governor Michael Dukakis appointed her as the first woman Commissioner of Public Health for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (the Massachusetts Department of Public Health). During her tern as Commissioner, she established the first Office of Violence Prevention in a state department of public health, expanded prevention programs for HIV/AIDS and increased drug treatment and rehabilitation programs. ^[4]

In 1991, she published Deadly Consequences: How Violence Is Destroying Our Teenage Population and a Plan to Begin Solving the Problem, which was the first literary work to present violence from a public health perspective to a mass audience. In 1995, President William Jefferson Clinton appointed her to the National Commission on Crime Control and Prevention.^[5]

Personal life

Dr. Prothrow-Stith is married to Boston University professor and U.S. Ambassador, Charles Richard Stith

Awards

• Secretary of Health and Human Services Exceptional Achievement in Public Service Award (1989, Louis W. Sullivan)
• American Psychiatric Association's Solomon Carter Fuller Award (1998)
• World Health Day Award (1993)
• 10 honorary doctorates

References

1. ^ Changing the Face of Medicine
2. ^ Answers.com Deborah Prothrow-Stith
3. ^ Changing the Face of Medicine
4. ^ Faculty, Harvard School of Public Health
5. ^ Changing the Face of Medicine

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Name	Prothrow-Stith, Deborah
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Date of birth	1954
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