Title: Martha May Eliot Award Winner Selected
Author:
Section/SPIG: Maternal and Child Health
Issue Date:
Charles Samuel Mahan, MD, has been named winner of APHA's 2004 Martha May Eliot Award, which honors exceptional achievements in the field of maternal and child health.
Mahan, who is director of maternal and child health policy for the Florida-based Lawton and Rhea Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies, has been described by his colleagues as one of the most distinguished pioneers and current experts in the field of maternal and child health. He is a full professor in the University of South Florida College of Medicine's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, a member of the university's Graduate School faculty and a courtesy clinical professor for the University of Florida College of Medicine. He also served as dean of the University of South Florida's School of Public Health from 1995–2002.
Mahan's illustrious career spans four decades, beginning with a fellowship in endocrinology at Chicago's Cook County Hospital in 1964. While there, he developed his first interest in maternal and child health from a public health perspective, especially in pregnancy prevention.
Mahan was instrumental in developing Minnesota's first so-called "red door clinics," designed to reduce the stigma of venereal disease and offer services to populations that previously had no access to care.
He arrived in Gainesville, Fla., in 1974 to work at the University of Florida's Shands Hospital. Mahan took a year sabbatical in 1982 to write the Florida state infant mortality plan. The plan led to the development of Florida Healthy Start in 1991. He served as Florida's maternal and child health director from 1982-1987 and state health director from 1988-1995.
Mahan is involved in state and national policy development and currently is working with the American College of Nurse Midwives to make midwifery the standard of care for Medicaid and to make doulas, or trained labor support people, available for Medicaid births.
Congratulations to Dr. Mahan!