 | This article's lead section may not adequately summarize its contents.(February 2023) |
Angella Ferguson | |
|---|---|
| Born | Angella Dorothea Ferguson February 15, 1925 |
| Education | Howard University College of Medicine Bethesda Naval Hospital |
| Medical career | |
| Profession | Doctor |
| Field | Pediatrics |
| Institutions | Howard University Freedmen's Hospital |
| Research | Physiology [1] |
Angella Dorothea Ferguson (born February 15, 1925) is an American pediatrician known for her groundbreaking research on sickle cell disease. [2]
Angella Dorothea Ferguson was born in Washington, D.C. to George Alonzo Ferguson and his wife Mary Burton Ferguson. She is African-American and was one of eight children. [3] Though her father was a high school teacher, had his own architectural firm, and was a U.S. Army reservist, the family struggled financially, especially during the Great Depression. [1] [4] Angella became interested in chemistry and mathematics while attending Cardoza High School, from which she graduated in 1941. [4]
She went on to earn a BS in chemistry from Howard University in 1945, and an MD from Howard University College of Medicine in 1949. [2] At the time there were very few African-American women who were accepted into medical schools. She conducted her internship and residency at Washington Freedman's Hospital and joined the faculty at Howard University in 1953 as an instructor in pediatrics, [2] [5] a position she held until 1959, when she became assistant professor of pediatrics at Freedman's Hospital. [6] She became a full professor at the latter hospital from 1963 to 1990. [6] From 1953 to 1970 she was also an associate pediatrician at Freedman's Hospital. [6] She also completed postgraduate training at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, where she studied the effects and use of radioisotopes, [3] and obtained a fellowship to do postgraduate work in hematology at Cornell University Hospital. [3]
Concurrently, Ferguson was on the staff of the District of Columbia General Hospital; her tenure there extended from 1963 to 1990. [6] Additionally, she had her own private pediatrics practice in Washington, D.C, where she noticed that most pediatrics research focused on children of European descent. The lack of research on African-American children made it more difficult to provide good care for her patients. [7]
Her early research required her to understand normal development in African American children, but to her surprise no such baseline data existed. [8] In setting out to rectify this gap in knowledge, she made the startling discovery that African American infants learned to sit and stand earlier than infants of European descent. She attributed this trend to the fact that the parents of African American infants often did not have playpens or high chairs for them; hence they learned to sit and stand earlier than their white counterparts. [2]
While collecting data to correlate children's height and weight with age, Ferguson noticed a high prevalence of sickle cell disease among the infants she treated in her practice. [7] In her work she tracked the development of the disease in African American infants. [2] At that time, sickle-cell anemia was a little-known disease, and Ferguson was one of the first researchers to dedicate her studies to sickle cell disease. [9] Through experimentation, she determined that if infants drank a glass of water once a day before age five, the increased blood volume reduced their chances of having a sickle-cell crisis, a condition in which the flow of damaged red blood cells is impeded, causing painful clogging of blood vessels. [2] [8] Ferguson created guidelines for diagnosing sickle cell anemia in children under 12 using a blood test. [8] She also recommended increased use of oxygen during surgery for patients with sickle-cell, since the trauma of surgery increased symptoms. [3] The blood test she developed to detect the disease at birth became a standard test in forty U.S. states by 2010 and remains the standard in most states to this day. [9]
In 1965 Ferguson was given the responsibility of overseeing the design and construction of Freedman's new pediatrics wing, and eventually the renovation of the entire hospital, completed in 1975. [2] [10]
In 1970 she returned to Howard University as head of the University Office of Health Affairs. [6] In 1979 she was promoted to associate vice president for health affairs, a post she held until her retirement in 1990. [4] [6]
Ferguson is a member of the National Medical Association, the Society for Pediatric Research, the Society of Nuclear Medicine, and the New York Academy of Sciences. [6] She is the recipient of two Certificates of Merit from the American Medical Association. [6]
Ferguson married Charles M. Cabaniss, with whom she has two daughters. [4]
Pediatrics is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, paediatrics covers many of their youth until the age of 18. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends people seek pediatric care through the age of 21, but some pediatric subspecialists continue to care for adults up to 25. Worldwide age limits of pediatrics have been trending upward year after year. A medical doctor who specializes in this area is known as a pediatrician, or paediatrician. The word pediatrics and its cognates mean "healer of children," derived from the two Greek words: παῖς and ἰατρός. Pediatricians work in clinics, research centers, universities, general hospitals and children's hospitals, including those who practice pediatric subspecialties.
Audrey Forbes Manley is an American pediatrician and public health administrator. Manley was the first African-American woman appointed as chief resident at Cook County Children's Hospital in Chicago (1962). Manley was the first to achieve the rank of Assistant Surgeon General in 1988 and later served as the eighth president of Spelman College.
William Bosworth Castle was an American physician and physiologist who transformed hematology from a "descriptive art to a dynamic interdisciplinary science."
Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a group of blood disorders typically inherited. The most common type is known as sickle cell anaemia. It results in an abnormality in the oxygen-carrying protein haemoglobin found in red blood cells. This leads to a rigid, sickle-like shape under certain circumstances. Problems in sickle cell disease typically begin around 5 to 6 months of age. A number of health problems may develop, such as attacks of pain, anemia, swelling in the hands and feet, bacterial infections, and stroke. Long-term pain may develop as people get older. The average life expectancy in the developed world is 40 to 60 years.
Hans Dieter Ochs, is an immunologist and pediatrician. He is Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Immunology, Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle.
Marilyn Hughes Gaston is a physician and researcher. She was the first black woman to direct the Bureau of Primary Health Care in the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration. She is most famous for her work studying sickle cell disease (SCD).
Julie Makani is a Tanzanian medical researcher. From 2014 she is Wellcome Trust Research Fellow and Associate Professor in the Department of Haematology and Blood Transfusion at the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS). Also a visiting fellow and consultant to the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, she is based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In 2011, she received the Royal Society Pfizer Award for her work with sickle cell disease.
Doris Louise Wethers was an American pediatrician known for her research on sickle-cell disease.
Clarice D. Reid is an American pediatrician born in Birmingham, Alabama, who led the National Sickle Cell Disease Program at the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health. She went on to become the Director of Division of Blood Diseases and Resources at NHLBI. Reid was a member of the 1985-1986 Taskforce on Black and Minority Health. She has also served as President Emeritus on the American Bridge Association's Education and Charitable Foundation, and has scored a rare perfect bridge score.
Yvette Francis-McBarnette was an American pediatrician and a pioneer in treating children with sickle cell anaemia.
Sarah Kiguli, MBChB, MMed (Pediatrics), MHPE, is a Ugandan pediatrician, academic, and medical researcher. She is a professor and head of the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health at the Makerere University School of Medicine, a component of the Makerere University College of Health Sciences.
William Warrick Cardozo (1905–1962) was an accomplished private physician and pediatrician who also served as an instructor at the Howard University College of Medicine and as a school medical inspector for the District of Columbia Board of Health. He is best known for his research on sickle cell anemia, but also published articles about Hodgkin’s disease, the gastrointestinal health of children, and the physical development of African American children. Cardozo was an early African-American contributor in the healthcare profession.
Jeanne A. Smith was a former administrator at Harlem Hospital Center and an expert on sickle cell anemia who helped put in place federal guidelines for testing newborns for sickle cell anemia.
Wolf William Zuelzer was a German-American pediatric pathologist. He worked at the Children's Hospital of Michigan for 35 years, where he oversaw a large amount of pediatric research, particularly in the field of hematology. He received the John Howland Award in 1985.
Richard Iwa Idro is a Ugandan pediatric neurologist, researcher and academic, who serves as a senior lecturer in the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health at Makerere University College of Health Sciences.
Samuel Charache was an American hematologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University. He led the research team that discovered the first effective treatment for sickle cell disease, a painful and sometimes fatal blood disorder that mainly affects people of African ancestry.
Angela Okolo is a Nigerian professor of pediatrics and child health, neonatologist in the department of Pediatrics, Federal Medical Center, Asaba and President of the Nigerian Society of Neonatal Medicine (NISONM).
Ruth Robertson Berrey was an American pediatrician, educator, and a medical missionary to Nigeria. Berrey was active within the Alabama Pediatric Society and became a fellow in the American Academy of Pediatrics. As a medical missionary, she helped children in Nigeria and helped reduce leprosy in the population. As a public health officer in four Alabama counties, she conducted clinics for the detection of tuberculosis, cancer, diabetes, sickle cell anemia, and other diseases.
Roland Boyd Scott was an American researcher, pediatrician and authority on sickle cell disease. Scott authored a key paper in 1948 describing the incidence of sickle cell in infants that eventually led to the establishment of routine screening for newborns. He established the Howard University Center for Sickle Cell Disease. He was chairman of the pediatrics department at Howard University. He lobbied Congress to pass the Sickle Cell Anemia Control Act of 1971. He authored over 250 academic publications on allergy, growth and development, and sickle cell disease.
Kwaku Ohene-Frempong was a Ghanaian pediatric hematologist-oncologist and an expert in sickle cell disease (SCD). Ohene-Frempong grew up in Ghana and was a standout athlete in track-and-field, later competing for Yale University as well as Ghana at the 1970 British Commonwealth Games. He continued his medical training in the United States, where he completed medical school, pediatrics residency and a pediatric hematology-oncology fellowship. With a professional interest in SCD, Ohene-Frempong was a physician and involved in public health initiatives at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, Louisiana, and later the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in Pennsylvania. He continued professional relationships with Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana where he later became a full-time physician after retiring from CHOP. In Ghana, he established public health initiatives for SCD screening in newborns, as well as an SCD clinic for patients with the disease.