Jean Pakter, M.D.
Biography
Jean Pakter was born on Jan. 1, 1911, in Manhattan, the youngest of four children of David and Lillian Pakter. Her father worked as a tailor. She was one of only four women accepted to the class of 1934 at the New York University medical school at Bellevue Hospital, then known as University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College.
Dr. Pakter, spent five years at Mount Sinai Hospital, finishing her residency in 1939. An advocate for maternal and child health, she devoted her life to serving not only the City of New York, as Director of the Department of Health’s Bureau of Maternity Services and Family Planning from 1960 to 1982, but the nation as well.
As head of the bureau of maternity services and family planning, Dr. Pakter was also recognized for landmark research in the 1960s on women’s reproductive health that influenced several defining political events of her time, including the War on Poverty in the 1960s and the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.
Her bureau’s work in compiling childbirth statistics in the city also led Dr. Pakter to start an innovative protocol for the treatment of premature babies, which quickly became the norm nationwide. The process, which identified premature infants born in small community hospitals and urged their doctors to transfer them quickly to large, better-equipped teaching hospitals, increased survival rates markedly in the 1960s.
Dr. Pakter, who saw her job in essence as being New York’s chief pediatrician and family doctor, was instrumental in establishing rules for the new facilities, including guidelines for what equipment had to be in doctors’ offices and a requirement that abortions after 12 weeks be done in hospitals. These rules were later adopted in many states.
Her discipline for gathering and sharing statistics led to many noteworthy studies on prematurity, maternal and fetal mortality, abortion, sudden infant death syndrome, and promotion of breast feeding. Her Mount Sinai training of using scientific study and clinical expertise as a means of enacting social change led deservedly to numerous honors, awards, and citations.