Alumna recognized by American Medical Women’s Association

Dr. Ellen Einterz (MPHTM ‘90) was recognized by the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) with the Esther Pohl Lovejoy Award at the association’s recent anniversary meeting held in Philadelphia, Penn.

The award is named for Esther Pohl Lovejoy, who served as city health officer for Portland, Ore., from 1907 to 1909, the first woman to hold such a position in a major U.S. city. She went on to become active in women’s suffrage, politics, and several international health organizations. The Esther Pohl Lovejoy Award honors a woman physician who has demonstrated an interest in and dedication to the promotion of international relations through improvement in international health.

Einterz was born in New York and has degrees from McGill, Indiana, and Tulane Universities. She first went to Africa in 1974 as a teacher with the Peace Corps in Niger. After completing her medical training at McGill, she directed hospitals in Naka, Nigeria, and then Kolofata, Cameroon, for over three decades.

During the 2014/2015 Ebola epidemic, she was medical coordinator of an Ebola Treatment Unit in Liberia.

Dr. Einterz has published articles on a range of topics including snakebite, malaria, international aid, neonatal tetanus, family planning, traditional uvulectomy, telemedicine, trachoma, and access to healthcare in underserved parts of the world. She has been decorated twice by the government of Cameroon.

She is presently clinic physician for the Marion County Public Health Department’s refugee program and maintains an adjunct affiliation with the Indiana University School of Medicine and Fairbanks School of Public Health.

Dr. Einterz is the author of Life and Death in Kolofata: An American Doctor in Africa (Indiana University Press, 2018.