The Roots of Public Health Activism: A Grandmother's Tale

Yesterday we told you about the drive by the FDA's new deputy, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, to get antibiotics banned from animal feed as a way of protecting the drugs' potency in people.

That's just the latest in a long string of activist moves by Sharfstein, who took on the AMA and campaign contributions as a Harvard med student, and stood up to drugmakers and Big Tobacco (among others) as the health commissioner of Baltimore.

Today we have a better sense of where that deep streak of feistiness comes from — stretching back at least three generations.

In the middle was Josh's mom, Dr. Margaret Sharfstein, a pediatrician who was only one of five women in her med school class at Albert Einstein. Josh's dad, Dr. Steven Sharfstein, was the former president of the American Psychiatric Association who threw a bright spotlight in 2005 on the involvement of mental health professionals in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay.

But further back was Margaret's mother, Pearl N. Shiling. A longtime social worker who died late last week at age 90, Ms. Shiling fought a few public health battles herself.

(Read more about Ms. Shiling's daring after the jump)

 

In its obituary of Ms. Shiling, the Baltimore Sun quotes one of her former colleagues at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Joan Stine.

Pearl was the chief of social work in the preventive medicine administration and she helped establish the first rape and sexual assault care centers in Maryland hospitals. Before that time, rape victims were taken to police stations.

According to the obit, Ms. Shiling also helped set up family planning programs in state mental hospitals in Maryland. According to Ms. Stine,

When Pearl wanted something to happen, she was relentless.

Sounds like somebody else we're just beginning to know.

Who in your life has inspired you to take on causes bigger than yourself? We'd like to hear your family story, too.