WEIDMAN, HAZEL

Hazel Marie Hitson Weidman was born on August 3, 1923 in Taft, CA. She worked in medical settings prior to receiving an undergraduate degree in social anthropology from Northwestern University in 1951, and for a short while thereafter. She pursued her graduate studies at Harvard's Radcliffe College from 1956 to 1959. Convinced that the anthropological perspective would be helpful in understanding medical structures and health care processes, Hazel Weidman enrolled in the graduate program in the Department of Social Relations, from which she obtained a Ph.D. in 1959. Based on her own field research, the dissertation was entitled "Family patterns and paranoidal personality structure in Boston and Burma."

From 1959 through 1964, Weidman worked for various federal, state and local medical service agencies. Her statewide study of the tuberculosis control system in Massachusetts, jointly conducted with her husband Dr. William H. Weidman, provided the data for new tuberculosis control legislation. She also prepared position papers for the U.S. Public Health Services on the topic of "Public Health Goals in Metropolitan Areas" which took her into the complexities of hospital administration and staff training programs for Fresno County Hospital. Under the sponsorship of the state of California, Weidman developed a community-wide program for the protection of battered children.

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