Wellpath Celebrates Pride Month
June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month, and we’d like to take this week to recognize members of the LGBTQ+ community who have made major contributions to medicine. While Pride is a month-long celebration, Wellpath celebrates our diverse workforce every day of the year. Wellpath is committed to ensuring all team members, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, or religion, feel welcome, safe, and respected in their place of work.
Many of these individuals overcame rampant persecution; and while great societal strides have been made, it’s important to recognize the role we play as leaders to create a safe environment for all team members.
Like our other cultural celebration messages, this list is not all-inclusive:
- Sara Josephine Baker – Dr. Baker worked as a public health advocate in New York City, developing unprecedented interventions to improve child hygiene. Her work directly contributed to a 50% drop in infant mortality rates in NYC from 1908 to 1918. Because of her work, every US state had a child hygiene service program by 1923.
- Harry Stack Sullivan – Called “The American Freud,” Dr. Sullivan’s work in psychiatry focused on how interpersonal events help shape personality. Dr. Sullivan pulled heavily from his personal experiences with homophobia to help treat patients who had experienced abusive childhoods.
- Ethel Collins Dunham & Martha May Eliot – These two medical researchers met during college and remained in a domestic partnership until Dunham’s death in 1969. Dr. Dunham’s work established standards of care for newborn babies and publicized major innovations around newborn care. Dr. Eliot’s research on rickets helped establish minimum daily requirements for vitamins for children, helping reduce cases of rickets through inexpensive, universal prevention.
- Magnus Hirschfeld – This German physician founded some of the earliest LGBT advocacy groups. He lobbied for LGBT rights in pre-WWII Germany, pushing to eliminate social hostility against LGBT individuals. After his research institute was sacked by the Nazi party, Dr. Hirschfeld fled to France to escape further persecution.
- Patrick Trevor-Roper – This British eye surgeon advocated for the decriminalization of homosexuality in the United Kingdom. He split his time between working to provide better access to ophthalmic medicine in the UK and Africa, as well as helping address the 1980’s AIDS epidemic.
- Bruce Voeller – Dr. Voeller co-founded the National LGBTQ Task Force, which, in 1977, facilitated the first official discussion of LGBT rights in the White House. A biologist and AIDS researcher, he coined the term “acquired immune deficiency syndrome.”
- Andrew Mattison – A medical psychologist, Dr. Mattison studied recreational drug use in the LGBT community, which led to more in-depth research into recreational drug use at large. He also helped found the first federally funded research center dedicated to solely studying the effects of AIDS on the human brain.
Wellpath leaders create an inclusive work environment that celebrates the differences each of us bring to work every day. We champion inclusion and diversity as an integral part of everything we do. We are responsible for creating a safe workplace for all team members to be themselves. Our diverse workforce facilitates the compassion, collaboration, and innovation that Wellpath uses to transform patient care each and every day.
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