Sara Josephine Baker

Sara Josephine Baker was an American physician who led public health work among immigrant communities in New York City in the early twentieth century, becoming the first woman to hold a doctorate in public health. Alarmed that infant mortality in American cities exceeded the death rate of soldiers fighting in the First World War, she built programs training mothers in infant hygiene and feeding, established milk stations distributing safe milk, and designed a simple method of dosing newborns' eyes with silver nitrate to prevent blindness caused by gonorrhea. Her school health programs are credited with sharply reducing head lice and trachoma among New York schoolchildren, and she later served as the first woman on the League of Nations Health Committee.