The Helen O. Dickens, MD Presidential Professorship

This Professorship was founded in 2020 through the generosity of Janet F. Haas, MD, and John Otto Haas. The Haases are long-time friends of the University and Penn Medicine, who have endowed six professorships at Penn Medicine. Their establishment of the Dickens Professorship arose from both admiration for Helen Dickens’ legacy and the desire to support excellence in women’s health. Dr. Haas is an emerita Penn Trustee and Penn Medicine Board Member, and currently serves on Penn Medicine’s Development Leadership Cabinet.

Dr. Helen Octavia Dickens (1909-2001) was a pioneer in academic medicine and health equity. She was the Perelman School of Medicine’s first Black, female professor. The clinical programs and community outreach she began made a wide and long-lasting impact on some of Philadelphia’s most critical health issues: cancer screening, teen pregnancy, contraception, sexual health, and family planning.

Dr. Dickens’ father was a former slave who served as a water boy during the Civil War. Her parents insisted that she receive a good education and have a professional career. In 1934, Dr. Dickens received her medical degree from the University of Illinois, where she was the only Black woman in her graduating class.

She began her career in Philadelphia delivering babies to women living in poverty. To further her knowledge of OB/GYN, she studied for a year at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Medicine and passed the board examinations in 1945. She was the first Black, female board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist in Philadelphia. Over her career, Dr. Dickens held the positions of Director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Mercy Douglass Hospital and Chief of OB/GYN at Women's Hospital. In 1956, she joined the Perelman School’s faculty in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, becoming the School’s first Black, female full professor.

In 1967, Dr. Dickens founded one of the first multidisciplinary programs in the U.S. for teen parents. The Teen Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania offered services such as counseling, group therapy, educational classes, family planning assistance, and prenatal care. Dr. Dickens also established complementary education programs in the high schools for male and female students.

Dr. Dickens used her connections to community centers, churches, and other organizations to promote cancer screening. With the American Cancer Society, she launched a media campaign to educate women about the pap test and motivate them to get tested. She also implemented a project funded by the NIH that encouraged doctors to perform Pap smears to test for cervical cancer.

As a faculty member, Dr. Dickens helped to bring more Black students into the medical profession. She was named Associate Dean of Minority Admissions at Penn in 1969. In her first five years, she increased the number of minority medical students from two or three to 64.

In 1999, to recognize the 50 years Dr. Dickens devoted to healing, helping and guiding women, the women’s health clinic at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania was named the Helen O. Dickens Center for Women’s Health. Dr. Dickens helped to shape medicine through her active involvement in local, national, and international professional societies. She was a member of the Pan American Medical Women's Association and served as President from 1968 to 1970. She also served on the Board of Directors for many organizations, including the American Cancer Society, the Children's Aid Society, and the Devereaux Foundation.

Among her many honors, Dr. Dickens was recognized as the American Medical Association’s Woman of the Year and as a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania. She was also the first Black to receive the Gimbel Philadelphia Award for her "outstanding service to humanity."

Presidential Professorships are awarded to exceptional scholars of any rank who will contribute to the diverse experiences, perspectives, and eminence of Penn faculty. They were established in 2011 to strengthen the University’s ability to recruit, retain and mentor distinguished scholars who are preeminent in their fields and have demonstrated a commitment to sustaining an inclusive and vibrant academic community.

Current Chairholder

Oluwadamilola Fayanju, MD, MA, MPHS, FACS

Oluwadamilola (Lola) Fayanju, MD, MA, MPHS, FACS is the inaugural Helen O. Dickens Presidential Associate Professor at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, appointed in 2021. She is the Chief of Breast Surgery for UPHS and Surgical Director of the Rena Rowan Breast Center in the Abramson Cancer Center. She is also an Innovation Faculty member at the Penn Center for Cancer Care Innovation (PC3I) and a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI).

As an academic breast surgical oncologist, Dr. Fayanju’s research focuses on health disparities, aggressive breast cancer variants, and improving value in oncology, particularly through the collection and application of patient-reported outcomes (PROs). She is also working to make medicine in general and surgery in particular a more diverse and inclusive profession. In 2019, she was recognized by the National Academy of Medicine as an Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine Scholar. Her research is supported by funding from the NIH, and she has published in a variety of journals, including Annals of Surgery, Cancer, and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Dr. Fayanju received both her undergraduate degree in history and science and master’s in comparative literature from Harvard University. After earning her MD at Washington University in St. Louis, she went on to complete her residency in general surgery there and to obtain a master’s degree in population health sciences (MPHS) before completing fellowship training in breast surgical oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.