Naomi Deutsch

Naomi Deutsch (1890 to 1983) was a registered nurse who became the organizer and director of the Public Health Unit of the Federal Children's Bureau of the Department of Labor in Washington, D.C. She was born in Brno, Moravia, the daughter of Rabbi Gotthard Deutsch, and grew up in Cincinnati, where she graduated from the Jewish Hospital in 1912 and later studied at Teachers College, Columbia University. She worked as a public health nurse for visiting nurse associations in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, supervised and directed the Visiting Nurse Service of the Henry Street Settlement in New York, and from 1925 to 1934 directed the San Francisco Visiting Nurse Association. She lectured on public health nursing at the University of California, Berkeley, and from 1935 led the Children's Bureau unit that supported community nursing services. In 1943 she joined the Pan American Sanitation Bureau as principal nurse consultant for Central America and the Caribbean, and she wrote several works on public health nursing between 1935 and 1941.