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Presidential Citizens Medal Recipient Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias
1929 - 2001
Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias wanted to be a physician because medicine "combined the things I loved the most, science and people. I understood that medicine would give me more direct and independent ways to contribute to society, not through organizations or abstract studies, but acting directly on the individual."
Through her efforts to support abortion rights, abolish enforced sterilization, and provide neonatal care to underserved people, Helen Rodriguez-Trias expanded the range of public health services for women and children in minority and low-income populations in the United States, Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
Born in New York in 1929, Helen Rodriguez spent her early years in Puerto Rico, returning with her family to New York when she was 10. Growing up as a Puerto Rican in New York City, she had experienced racism and discrimination first-hand. Rodriguez-Trias graduated from the University of Puerto Rico in 1957 where she became a student activist on issues such as freedom of speech and Puerto Rican independence. Later she re-enrolled at the University of Puerto Rico to study medicine, a field that "combined the things I loved the most, science and people."
She obtained her medical degree with highest honors in 1960, and gave birth to her fourth child. During her residency, she established the first center for the care of newborn babies in Puerto Rico. Under her direction, the hospital's death rate for newborns decreased 50 percent within three years.
When she returned to New York in 1970, Dr. Rodriguez-Trias decided to work in community medicine. At Lincoln Hospital, which serves a largely Puerto Rican section of the South Bronx, she headed the department of pediatrics. Her patients, among the lowest-income populations in the United States at that time, were struggling for greater political power and better health care. At Lincoln Hospital, Rodriguez-Trias lobbied to give all workers a voice in administrative and patient-care issues. She also tried to raise awareness of cultural issues in the Puerto Rican community amongst health care workers at the hospital. At that time, she was also an associate professor of medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University, and later taught at Columbia and Fordam universities.
Throughout the 1970s, Dr. Rodriguez-Trias was an active member of the women's health movement. She was inspired by "the experiences of my own mother, my aunts and sisters, who faced so many restraints in their struggle to flower and reach their own potential." After attending a conference on abortion at Barnard College in 1970, she focused on reproductive rights.
Rodriguez-Trias joined the effort to stop sterilization abuse. Poor women, women of color, and women with physical disabilities were far more likely to be sterilized than white, middle-class women. In Puerto Rico, for example, between 1938 and 1968, a third of the women of child-bearing age were sterilized without being fully informed of its consequences.
Rodriguez-Trias was a founding member of both the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse and the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse, and testified before the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare for passage of federal sterilization guidelines in 1979. The guidelines, which she helped draft, require a woman's written consent to sterilization, offered in a language they can understand, and set a waiting period between the consent and the sterilization procedure.
In the 1980s, Rodriguez-Trias served as medical director of the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute, where she worked on behalf of women with HIV. In the 1990s, she focused on reproductive health as co-director of the Pacific Institute for Women's Health, a nonprofit research and advocacy group dedicated to improving women's well-being worldwide. Rodriguez-Trias was a founding member of both the Women's Caucus and the Hispanic Caucus of the American Public Health Association and the first Latina to serve as president. She lobbied for health and reproductive issues in International Women's Conferences in Cairo and Beijing. Toward the end of her life she said, "I hope I'll see in my lifetime a growing realization that we are one world. And that no one is going to have quality of life unless we support everyone's quality of life...Not on a basis of do-goodism, but because of a real commitment...it's our collective and personal health that's at stake."
In January 2001 she received a Presidential Citizens Medal for her work on behalf of women, children, people with HIV and AIDS, and the poor. Helen Rodriguez-Trias died of complications from cancer in December, 2001.
Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias with President Bill Clinton at the Presidential Citizens Medal ceremony January 8, 2001
CITATION:
A dedicated pediatrician, outstanding educator, and dynamic leader in public health, Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias has strived to ensure full and equal access to health care for all. With unwavering conviction, she has challenged discriminatory practices in health care, encouraged community involvement in creating healthy environments, worked to prevent the spread of AIDS, and advocated for improving womens and childrens health. Throughout her career, she has met every challenge with wisdom, strength, and compassion.
Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias, pediatrician, activist for women's reproductive rights, and founder of the first clinic for newborns on the island of Puerto Rico, ca. 1963
Health Care Advocate Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias Dies
By Vicente Hernandez
el Tecolote staff writer
Memorial services were recently held in San Francisco to remember Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias, a Latina who devoted her life to improving the health care needs of women, children and the poor. Dr. Rodriquez-Trias lost her battle with lung cancer in her Brookdale home on December 27, 2002. She was 72.
 July 7, 1929 -- Dec. 27, 2001
Rodriquez-Trias accomplished many firsts in her career as a pediatrician. She was the first Latina president of the American Public Health Association, the largest organization of public health professionals. Last year President Bill Clinton recognized Dr. Rodriguez-Trias with the Presidential Citizens Medal for her work on behalf of women, children, AIDS patients and the poor.
Her contributions to health care were not just local or even national; Rodriquez-Trias' campaign went beyond fronteras. In her later years, she partnered with UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley and USF to develop workshops in Chiapas and Central America so campesinos and women could be future public health care leaders. In California she served on the Office of Women's Health Advisory Council and worked as a health consultant to prevent HIV infection in women and children.
Rodriguez-Trias was born in Puerto Rico and graduated from the University of Puerto Rico Medical School. Her passion for health care was evident even then. While still in school, she helped create the first neonatal care center. She later became the neonatal center's director, and was credited for decreasing infant mortality at the hospital where she worked.
In 1970 she moved to New York and her commitment to health care did not lessen. She was an educator, teaching at several universities including Columbia University. In New York she became an outspoken leader in the women's health movement, serving on the boards of the National Women's Health Network and the Boston Women's Health Book Collective. She also worked closely with the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse and helped draft what became the federal guidelines regarding sterilization.
When she became president of the American Health Association in 1993, she commented: "I am truly involved in the totality of medicine, in keeping the nation as a whole healthy rather than the individual patient, IN preventing illnesses rather than curing it. Our agenda covers everything having to do with preventive care, from clean air and water to the standards of medical practice."
President of the Latino Commission on AIDS Dennis deLeon worked with Rodriquez-Trias and commented, "Dr. Rodriquez-Trias was a medical doctor who saw what many people in the medical profession neglected -- that the health and well being of low income Latinos and African Americans cannot be addressed in the isolation of social and political advocacy. She constantly encourages her colleagues not to be blind to the sociocultural conditions that brings about the diseases that they are trying to treat. Her career is a story of activism and action AND should serve as an inspiration to every Latino thinking about entering public service."
Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias is survived by husband Edward Gonzalez, a professor of labor studies; two daughters, Dr. Jo Ellen Brainin-Rodriguez and Laura Brainin-Rodriguez of San Francisco; two sons, David Brainin-Rodriguez of Oakland and Daniel Curet-Rodriguez of Los Angeles.
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Citizens Medal History
