Dr. Helen Nash, who died last week, was a pediatrician who broke racial barriers to become the first black physician at St. Louis Children's Hospital in 1949.
She was a leader in child abuse prevention services, advocating that physicians report mistreatment by parents or caretakers.
She helped convince City Hall politicians to fight lead poisoning and rat bites, once common among St. Louis children.
Dr. Helen Elizabeth Nash died Thursday (Oct. 4, 2012) at Clermont Manor in Creve Coeur. She was 91 and a longtime St. Louis resident.
She was reared in Atlanta, where her father was a general practitioner and her mother a social worker. She was the second of five children, a boy and four girls.
As a budding scientist, she grew fruit flies on the back porch for a high school experiment.
She was determined to go to medical school, despite her father's reluctance. At medical school, her mother told her to make sure she was treated as the men were, Dr. Nash recalled in a 1989 interview with the Post-Dispatch.
She earned her medical degree in 1945 at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., where her father had graduated in 1910, and still one of the few medical schools open to blacks at the time.
She came to St. Louis to train in pediatrics at the old Homer G. Phillips Hospital. Opened in 1937, it was the only teaching hospital in St. Louis open to African-American physicians.
It was one of the few institutions anywhere where blacks could get quality specialty training.
Dr. Nash became chief resident and later pediatric supervisor. She helped reduce the death rate of premature babies with new incubators and more hand-washing facilities. She had to plead for changes before an all-male hospital board.
"I remember her talking about getting air conditioning in the hospital," recalled a niece, Dr. Alison Nash of St. Louis, a pediatrician who followed her aunt's path.
After finishing her residency, Dr. Helen Nash went into private practice.
During the late 1940s, she and her mentor, Dr. Park White, a physician at Children's Hospital, convinced St. Louis Mayor Aloys Kaufman to order the junkyards cleaned of abandoned car batteries that were leaking lead.
Citing rat bite cases she had seen among children, Dr. Nash also persuaded the mayor to increase the budget for rat eradication.
In 1949, Dr. Nash broke two barriers: She became the first black physician, male or female, at Children's Hospital. She also became the only woman among the first four African-American physicians invited to join the staff of the Washington University School of Medicine.
At Children's Hospital, she and White introduced the idea of providing a bassinet for each infant, instead of keeping them in groups.
That led to a dramatic decrease in infections, according to Dr. Will Ross, associate professor at Washington University. "It sounds pretty basic but it was quite a remarkable feat at the time," Ross said.
"She would act and act decisively when she saw something that needed fixing," said Dr. Edwin Dodson, dean of admissions at Washington U.'s medical school.
In 1964, Dr. Nash married businessman James Abernathy. He died in 1980.
Dr. Nash retired from her practice in 1993 but took a new role at the medical school in charge of diversity. She was credited with raising the academic level of minority students.
She became medical director for a time at Reproductive Health Services, Missouri's busiest abortion clinic.
Dr. Nash treated about 20,000 patients over 50 years. She once explained why she had moved to St. Louis to train and work: "I didn't want to practice second-rate. I wanted to be a part of a mainstream medical community."
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Oct. 27 at All Saints Episcopal Church, 5010 Terry Avenue. Her body will be cremated.
Among the survivors are a brother, Dr. Homer Nash of Olivette; and a sister, Dorothy Shack of Oakland, Calif.