Our name
Who is Dr. Helen?
Dr. Helen AI is named in honor of Dr. Helen Octavia Dickens, a Black obstetrician and gynecologist who brought care to women where they were. We made it in her spirit and in her honor.
In her spirit
Dr. Dickens went to women instead of waiting for them to come to her: into their homes and their neighborhoods, and to girls who were still in school. She cared for the whole of a woman’s life, not only the visit, and she opened doors for the people who came after her.
That is what we want every member to feel: a care team that comes to her, takes her word seriously, and speaks up when something needs a doctor.
Her life
- She was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1909. Her father had been born into slavery.
- In 1934 she finished medical school at the University of Illinois, the only Black woman in her class.
- She began in Philadelphia caring for families who had little money, often in their own homes. Once, in a house with no electricity, she moved the bed to the window and delivered a baby by the light of a streetlamp.
- She trained in obstetrics and gynecology at Harlem Hospital in New York, and became the first Black woman certified in that specialty in Philadelphia.
- She led the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Mercy-Douglass Hospital in Philadelphia.
- In 1950 she became the first Black woman named a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.
- She brought cancer screening into Philadelphia’s neighborhoods, and led a project, funded by the National Institutes of Health, that encouraged doctors to give Pap tests.
- In 1967, at the University of Pennsylvania, she started a clinic for teenage mothers still in school: prenatal care, counseling, classes and family planning in one place. She led it for the rest of her career.
- As a dean at Penn from 1969, she helped grow the number of minority medical students from three to sixty-four in five years.
- She died in 2001.
What our name is not
Dr. Helen AI is not Dr. Dickens, and it is not a doctor. It is a team of AI care-team members, and each of them says so. Dr. Helen AI is not connected to her family or to the University of Pennsylvania.