May Cohen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
May Cohen, OC (born 1931) is a Canadian physician and educator.[1] She is best known for initiating the creation of a women's health curriculum in Ontario medical schools and for her work as a women's health advocate.[2]
May Cohen, née Lipshitz, was born on March 7, 1931, in Montreal, Quebec.[3] She is the daughter of Sam and Manya Lipshitz.[4] Her father, Sam, worked as the editor of a Jewish newspaper and her mother, Manya, taught Yiddish.[5] Shortly after she was born, she and her family moved to Toronto, Ontario, where she was raised.[5] She attended the Harbord Collegiate Institute and graduated as the top student in Ontario before attending medical school at the University of Toronto.[6] She graduated from medical school in 1955 and was the recipient of a Cody Medal.[7] After graduating, she received a Medical Research Council scholarship to study endocrinology for two years.[6]
Career
After finishing medical school, May Cohen went on to practice as a family physician in Toronto for 20 years.[8] Then, in 1977, she began teaching and practicing family medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.[2] In 1987, she went on sabbatical and travelled to Australia to focus on her work in the women's health field.[7] When she returned, she became a part of a task force run by the Canadian Medical Association centered on reproductive technology.[7] During this time, she was also a contributing member of the Women's Issues Committee at the Ontario Medical Association.[7] She then helped to identify weaknesses in the curricula of every medical school in Ontario.[7] The findings of the Women's Issues Committee sparked the creation of the Women's Health Office and the Gender Issues Committee at McMaster University.[7] The Women's Health InterSchool Curriculum Committee, of which she was the co-founder, was also created due to the inadequacies discovered by the Women's Issues Committee.[2][7] From 1990 to 1991, she served as the national president of the Federation of Medical Women of Canada.[9] She was the Associate Dean of Health Services at McMaster University from 1991 to 1996.[9] Beginning in 1991, she served as the founding chair of the Women's Health Office at McMaster University.[10] She stepped down from this position following her retirement in 1998.[10] She has several research publications relating to her work in the women's health field.[11][12]
