Dr. Joyce C. Lashof, who fought for well being fairness and broke obstacles as the primary lady to move a state public well being division and the primary to function dean of the College of Public Well being on the College of California, Berkeley, died on June 4 at an assisted residing neighborhood in Berkeley. She was 96.
Her daughter, Carol Lashof, mentioned the trigger was coronary heart failure.
Over a protracted and diverse profession, family and friends members mentioned, Dr. Lashof at all times prioritized the combat for social justice. Within the Sixties, she based a neighborhood well being heart to offer medical care in a low-income part of Chicago. After her appointment as director of the Illinois Division of Public Well being in 1973, the 12 months of the Supreme Courtroom’s Roe v. Wade choice codifying the constitutional proper to abortion, Dr. Lashof established protocols to offer ladies entry to protected abortion within the state, Carol Lashof mentioned.
Within the Nineteen Eighties, Dr. Lashof leveraged her powers as a high college administrator to arrange initiatives to combat discrimination in opposition to folks with AIDS and to protest Apartheid in South Africa.
She championed social justice exterior of her skilled life as properly, taking her household on so many marches for peace and civil rights within the Sixties that they got here to view mass protests as “a household outing,” her son, Dan, recalled. Joan Baez as soon as carried out of their front room in Chicago, the household mentioned, for a fund-raiser for the anti-segregation Pupil Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
“From the beginning, her work in drugs and public well being was deeply animated by a profound dedication to problems with social justice in our society,” mentioned Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at Harvard who labored on AIDS coverage with Dr. Lashof as a Berkeley graduate pupil within the Nineteen Eighties. “That included points round racism, that included points round social class, that included points round gender.”
After a short tenure as a deputy assistant secretary on the federal Division of Well being, Training and Welfare and an extended tenure as assistant director of the Workplace of Expertise Evaluation, she was appointed to run Berkeley’s College of Public Well being in 1981. In that put up, Dr. Krieger mentioned, she was not content material to restrict her scope to administrative duties.
On the peak of the AIDS epidemic in 1986, for instance, she set her sights on defeating Proposition 64, a California poll initiative spearheaded by the far-right political agitator Lyndon LaRouche that will have mandated mass testing for AIDS and, critics feared, mass quarantines.
Dr. Lashof secured the cooperation of all 4 public well being colleges within the California college system to arrange a coverage evaluation on the initiative, which Dr. Krieger mentioned was their first such joint undertaking. The evaluation, offered to the California State Meeting, demonstrated the possibly dangerous results of the measure and, Dr. Krieger mentioned, contributed to its defeat.
Dr. Lashof’s mates mentioned she approached activism with the thoughts of a scientist. “It was about at all times desirous to convey the proof to bear on what the issues have been that have been inflicting well being inequities,” Dr. Krieger mentioned.
These efforts usually began on the neighborhood degree. In 1967, Dr. Lashof, then on the school of the College of Illinois Faculty of Medication, opened the Mile Sq. Well being Heart in Chicago, a neighborhood well being clinic financed by the federal Workplace of Equal Alternative that offered medical care to an impoverished space of the town.
“She was one of many key folks in serving to get neighborhood well being facilities federally funded and viable on this nation,” Dr. Krieger mentioned.
The Mile Sq. heart, the second such neighborhood well being heart within the nation, by no means achieved the identical degree of renown as the primary, in Mound Bayou, Miss., which made Dr. H. Jack Geiger, one if its founders, nationally identified.
“Joyce usually was overshadowed, specifically by males who have been extra charismatic at a time when sexism was extra widespread,” mentioned Meredith Minkler, a professor emerita of well being and social conduct at Berkeley who labored with Dr. Lashof on social justice points over time. “However she wasn’t involved about being within the limelight. She was involved about creating change.”
Joyce Ruth Cohen was born on March 27, 1926, in Philadelphia, the daughter of Harry Cohen, a licensed public accountant whose dad and mom have been Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, and Rose (Brodsky) Cohen, a homemaker who was born in Ukraine and served as a volunteer with the Hebrew Immigrant Assist Society, serving to settle German Jewish refugees in america throughout and after World Warfare II.
“Her mom clearly instilled in her an ambition to take a full function in society,” Dan Lashof mentioned. “She had been fascinated with drugs from an early age, and sooner or later mentioned she wished to be a nurse. Her mom mentioned, ‘Properly, if you happen to’re going to be a nurse and do all that work, you would possibly as properly be a physician and be in cost.’”
However after graduating from Duke College with honors in 1946, she discovered her path to high graduate medical packages blocked. Many then restricted the variety of Jewish candidates they accepted and, because the battle ended, have been giving admissions precedence to males coming back from the armed providers, in response to the Nationwide Library of Medication. She lastly earned a spot on the Girls’s Medical Faculty of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
She married Richard Okay. Lashof, a theoretical mathematician, in 1950. By the mid-Nineteen Fifties, each she and her husband have been junior college members on the College of Chicago. In 1960, she as soon as once more confronted gender discrimination when the division chairman denied her a promotion.
“The chair knowledgeable me that he couldn’t suggest a girl for a tenure-track appointment, particularly a married lady, as a result of she undoubtedly would comply with her husband wherever he would go,” Dr. Lashof mentioned at a well being convention in 1990. “C’est la vie.”
Undeterred, she joined the school on the College of Illinois Faculty of Medication. There she was appointed to direct a examine of well being wants, a undertaking that led to her work growing neighborhood well being facilities.
Along with her youngsters, Dr. Lashof is survived by six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 2010. Their eldest daughter, Judith Lashof, died of breast most cancers in 2018.
Within the early Nineteen Eighties, Dr. Lashof donned a cap and robe to march in a protest urging the College of California to divest from South Africa. She was, Dr. Minkler mentioned, the one campus dean to take action.
“She would stick her neck out,” Dr. Minkler mentioned. “It didn’t matter who she wanted to cross.”
When she was 91, Dr. Lashof carried an indication that learn “Finish the Muslim Ban Now” at a protest in Alameda, Calif., in opposition to the Trump administration’s ban on journey to america by residents of 5 predominantly Muslim nations.
Towards the tip of her life, Dr. Lashof was heartened by the numerous advances in social justice that had been made over time, Carol Lashof mentioned. However in latest months, she was aghast to listen to that the Supreme Courtroom was contemplating overturning Roe v. Wade.
“She was completely baffled,” Carol Lashof mentioned. “She simply checked out me and mentioned, ‘How might which have occurred?’”
Dr. Lashof’s many accomplishments have been all of the extra vital as a result of she was a girl.
“Breaking quite a few glass ceilings was vital in her profession,” Dr. Minkler mentioned, “and it was one in all her most vital legacies.”
