Dunham, Ethel Collins (1883–1969)

American pediatrician. Born Ethel Collins Dunham on Mar 12, 1883, in Hartford, Connecticut; died Dec 13, 1969, in Cambridge, Massachusetts; dau. of Samuel G. Dunham and Alice (Collins) Dunham; lived with Martha May Eliot.

Interned in pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Hospital's Harriet Lane Home (1918); was one of the 1st women house officers at New Haven Hospital and worked in department of pediatrics (late 1910s); became director of New Haven Dispensary's outpatient clinic and head of nursery for newborn babies (1920); was instructor at Yale University's School of Medicine (1920), becoming assistant professor (1924), associate clinical professor (1927), and holding title of lecturer in clinical pediatrics (1935–50); was appointed medical officer in charge of neonatal studies by head of US Children's Bureau (1927); presented report to American Pediatric Society (APS), indicating premature birth as leading cause of death in infants (1933), and was appointed chair of committee on neonatal studies created by APS; became director of Children's Bureau's department of research in child development in Washington, DC (1935); worked with World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, as consultant to maternal and child health section (1949–51); was 1st woman to win Howland Medal, APS's highest award (1957). Wrote Premature Infants, a Manual for Physicians (1948) and Samuel G. Dunham, Alice Collins Dunham, Their Descendants and Antecedents (1955).