Save-a-Life: Dr. Helen O. Dickens and Ovarian Cancer Prevention in Postwar Philadelphia

This paper demonstrates the complex relationship between African American clubwomen and cancer prevention programs in post-World War II Philadelphia. It uses the life and career of Dr. Helen Dickens, as a window into one African American female obstetrician and gynecologist cancer prevention initiatives that aided in reducing disparities in healthcare from 1946 to 1972. She was a member of several prominent clubs the National Council of Negro Women, Junior Business and Professional League of Philadelphia, and the sorority Delta Sigma Theta. Focusing on Dickens’s work within these organizations in Philadelphia points out the continuity of black women’s health activism in the realm of cancer prevention by stressing the interplay between women’s civic groups and physicians. Significantly, Dickens defined access to health care as a democratic right, appropriating notions of citizenship to the practice of medicine. Exploring African American women’s contribution is thus important in order to fully appreciate the broader social landscape in which cancer prevention programs developed in twentieth-century America.