Making a Difference in the Peace Corps
Mammography Pioneer Sees Eye to Eye with Patients
Innovative Lectures Engage Students' Interest
Challenging Conventional Wisdom
KEEP US INFORMED:
Please send us your comments on this issue, ideas for future issues, and news about your professional interests and accomplishments.
Al Dorof, Editor
adorof@brynmawr.edu
info@brynmawr.edu
©2007
 |
Judith D. Schaffel Rubin '64 |
One day in 1948, at the age of four, Judith D. Schaffel Rubin '64 became quite ill, enduring severe stomach pains and running a high fever. But because it was a Sunday, her pediatrician wouldn't make a house call to see her. So Rubin's mother took her to the emergency room at Akron Children's Hospital, where the chief resident diagnosed appendicitis.
"I went to surgery, and it became a family story about how this man saved my life," Rubin recalls. "He was like a god in my family. I was in the hospital for two weeks, a horrible two weeks. While I was there I broke out in chicken pox. They tied down my arms and legs so that I wouldn't scratch my incision. I was lonesome and in pain and restrained."
While in hospital, a thought arose in Rubin's mind that would define her life.
"I never want to be a patient again," she remembers thinking. "How you get to never be a patient again is, you become a doctor — because, clearly, in a young person's mind, you're one thing or another. You're not both."
Beginning a Life in Medicine
When Rubin arrived at Bryn Mawr as a 16-year-old, she found the transition from coed public high school to private women's college a tough one. She intended to transfer, but after her freshman year she attended summer classes, switched her major from French to chemistry, took more summer classes after her sophomore year, and graduated in just three years.
One of three ambitious girls who refused to be defined by stereotypes ("I've always said I'm the oldest of three boys who happen to be women," she says) and ever mindful of her dreadful childhood hospitalization, Rubin knew what her next step had to be.
"For my family, it was never a question of girls have to be nurses," she notes. "My parents always said, 'Why would you be a nurse when you could be a doctor? There are no limits.' That always struck me as very Bryn Mawr."
And so Rubin went on to medical school, earning her M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Following a pediatrics internship at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Rubin went to Iran as an exchange resident. She returned to the United States and completed her residency in pediatrics and preventive medicine at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, while also earning an M.P.H. from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.
Rubin joined the University of Maryland faculty in 1977, holding a joint faculty appointment in the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, areas in which she is board certified.
Clinical Practice, Teaching and Research
As a clinician Rubin practiced pediatrics in inner city Baltimore and taught and supervised medical students and residents in both inpatient and outpatient pediatric settings. Her research interests have included congenital heart disease, lead poisoning, childhood tooth decay and pediatric immunization programs.
Rubin's epidemiological work has included participation in the landmark Baltimore-Washington Infant Study, which examined genetic and environmental risk factors for congenital heart disease. In work supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in the early 1990s, a consortium of researchers in four states studied whether oral succimer, a drug that had been recently introduced to excrete heavy metals from the brain, affects neurodevelopmental outcomes when administered to preschool children with moderately elevated blood lead levels.
"The lead poisoning work was very interesting," Rubin says. "That was a very unique opportunity. NIEHS had not done a lot of human studies at that point, and our study was the only randomized clinical trial of this drug ever. Succimer takes lead out of the body. The question we investigated was 'Has the lead already done its damage?' It turned out that there were no significant differences in outcomes of the treatment and control groups.
"There are a lot of political and legal ramifications of lead poisoning that aren't over yet. All along to me, the whole lead poisoning thing has been really criminal. It's not just a public health or medical issue. It's criminal what's done to the most vulnerable kids. Treatment might save somebody's life, but prevention is the only plausible strategy."
Rubin retains a part-time academic post in pediatrics and epidemiology at Maryland, but retired from practice in July 2005, when she began working for the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education as one of 30 site visitors evaluating medical residency programs in 120 specialties. She has some regrets about leaving her clinical practice, but is enjoying her new initiative, where her experience is a prized asset.
"To be a site visitor, you have to have a lot of miles on your tires," Rubin says. "They want people who have been residency program directors and members of medical specialty boards and residency review committees. I think we're making a difference in graduate medical education, ensuring we have well-trained doctors who aren't bitter about the conditions under which they're trained.
"I call it my Alzheimer's prevention program. It's challenging, but it's totally within my comfort zone."
Tom Durso writes about science, health care and business for a variety of publications, including the Philadelphia Business Journal and Family Business magazine.