Looking for a path that would allow her to pursue her wide array of interests, Rosemary A. Stevens decided to dedicate herself to academia. That decision paid off, as, more than five decades later, she continues to contribute to the field. Since 2005, Dr. Stevens has served as a DeWitt Wallace Distinguished Scholar of Social Medicine and Public Policy in the Department of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, and since 2001, she has served as a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. She joined the latter school in 1979 and has held a number of positions over the years, including professor of history and the sociology of science, senior fellow in the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, and Stanley I. Sheerr endowed term professor. Previously, she has worked as an academic visitor at LSE, an assistant professor and professor at Yale University, a visiting lecturer at The Johns Hopkins University, and a guest scholar at The Brookings Institution.
Dr. Stevens steadily grew to become an accomplished and respected voice in her professional community, covering research topics like the organization of specialization in modern American medicine, the history of medical practice in England, and the self-regulatory structures of the medical profession. She has published her findings in a variety of articles and books, most recently, “A Time of Scandal: Charles R. Forbes, Warren G. Harding and the Making of the Veterans Bureau,” in 2016. Notable publications also include “The Public-Private Health Care State,” “Welfare Medicine in America,” “Medical Practice in Modern England: The Impact of Specialization and State Medicine,” “In Sickness and in Wealth: American Hospitals in the Twentieth Century,” “American Medicine and the Public Interest,” and, “Foreign Trained Physicians and American Medicine,” among others. In 2006, she co-edited “History and Health Policy in the United States: Putting the Past Back In.”
When Dr. Stevens isn’t working, she is lending her talents to her community. From 2002 to 2003, she was the chairman of history and the philosophy of science for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and from 1980 to 2017, she was a member of the board of directors of the Milbank Memorial Fund. She remains a fellow of the American Academy of Medicine and a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Sociological Association, The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the American Board of Pediatrics, the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, the American Public Health Association, and the Association of University Programs in Health Administration to this day.
In recognition of her success, Dr. Stevens was honored with the Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation from 1998 to 2003, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association for the History of Medicine, Incorporated, in 2002, and the Carlson Award for Extraordinary Contributions to the History of Medicine from Weill Cornell Medical College at Cornell University in 2000. She also received the Nicholas E. Davies Award from Piedmont Healthcare in 1997, and the Arthur Viseltear Award in the History of Public Health from the American Public Health Association, the Baxter Foundation Prize of Distinction in Health Services Research, and the Welch Medal of Distinction in the History of Medicine by the American Association of History Medicine, Incorporated, in 1990. From 1984 to 1985, Dr. Stevens held the distinguished title of Guggenheim Fellow, and from 1982 to 1983, she held the distinguished title of Rockefeller Humanities Fellow. Other accolades include being named a Bellagio Study and Conference Scholar and earning the Frohlich Medal from the Royal Society of Medicine.
Dr. Stevens’ professional designations include honorary degrees from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Northeast Ohio Medical University, and Hahnemann University, a PhD and a Master of Public Health from Yale University, a diploma in social administration from Manchester University, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Oxford.