I have been featuring important Black women physicians on my blog for the last few years to honor Black History Month and 2023 is no different! I am taking the opportunity every year to learn about someone I didn’t know about and this year I came upon Dr. Renee Rosalind Jenkins during my research.
She was born in 1947 in Philadelphia, PA, which is my current location! She moved to Michigan at the end of high school and there she graduated cum laude. The NIH library page reports that her own mother was worried that she would not get married if she became a physician. This did not turn out to be true as she is married and has a daughter, who also became a physician. I know many of us women doctors wonder if our careers negatively influence our children and I imagine having your own child follow your footsteps is quite rewarding. It probably also is a testament of what a great role model Dr. Jenkins is.
She earned her college and medical degrees at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, where not surprisingly she encountered prejudice and low expectations for minority students. She trained in pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and then completed a fellowship in Adolescent medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, which is affiliated with Albert Einstein. Both are located in the Bronx, New York.
She went on to become chair of the Department of Pediatrics and Child Care at the Howard University College of Medicine and became the first African American president of the Society of Adolescent Medicine in 1989. She was elected the first African American president of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2007. She was a professor at both Howard University and George Washington University.
Dr. Jenkins wrote the adolescent section of Nelson’s Textbook of Pediatrics, the most widely used book for reference for pediatricians. She has received many honors and has given expert testimony in front of the US Congress to continue funding programs that benefit children and adolescents in the United States.
If you didn’t know who Dr. Jenkins was, I hope now you caught a glimpse of what an amazing role model she has been. She has clearly inspired many physicians throughout her career and continues to do so.
References
NIH. Changing the face of Medicine. https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_169.html
Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation. 61 Black Women in Medicine You Should Know. https://www.wimlf.org/blog/61-black-women-in-medicine-you-should-know