National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior

136 Fall Street
Seneca Falls, NY 13148

315-568-2991 phone
315-568-2141 fax

Women's Rights National Historical Park

Release Date: July 15, 2003
Contact: name: Information Desk
Phone: 315 568-2991

Dr. Antonia Novello to Headline
Seneca Falls Convention Days

For More Information: Contact the park at 315-568-2991

An eloquent speaker and champion of health care issues for women and children, Dr. Antonia Novello, Commissioner of Health for New York State, will be the keynote speaker for Convention Days in Seneca Falls on Sunday at 2 p.m. Dr. Novello will speak in the historic Wesleyan Chapel at Women’s Rights National Historical Park on Fall Street. The public is invited. Admission is free.

"We are delighted and honored to welcome Dr. Novello," said Josie Fernandez, Park Superintendent. "No one who has heard this dynamic speaker can remain unmoved. She is an inspiration in the tradition of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the other conveners of the First Women’s Rights Convention whom we honor this weekend."

The fiery Dr. Novello, who served as Surgeon General of the United States under President George Herbert Walker Bush in 1990, is the first woman and Hispanic to hold the post. She electrified audiences in Seneca Falls when she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1994.

Dr. Novello specialized in pediatrics in her private practice in Michigan before joining the National Institutes of Health where she served as Deputy Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and as Coordinator for AIDS research. She combined these two fields when she developed a special interest in pediatric AIDS.

Assigned to the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, she made major contributions to the drafting and enactment of the Organ Transplantation Procurement Act of 1984.

During her tenure as Surgeon General, Dr. Novello focused her attention on the health of women, children and minorities, as well as on underage drinking, smoking, and AIDS. She played an important role in launching the Healthy Children Ready to Learn Initiative. She was actively involved in working with other organizations to promote immunization of children and childhood injury prevention efforts. She spoke out often and forcefully about illegal underage drinking, and called upon the Health and Human Services Inspector General to issue a series of eight reports on the subject.

Dr. Novello also similarly worked to discourage illegal tobacco use by young people, and repeatedly criticized the tobacco industry for appealing to the youth market through the use of cartoon characters such as "Joe Camel." A workshop that she convened led to the emergence of a National Hispanic/Latino Health Initiative.

Dr. Novello remained in the post of Surgeon General through June 30, 1993. She then served as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Special Representative for Health and Nutrition from 1993 to 1996. In 1996, she became Visiting Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. Dr. Novello became Commissioner of Health for the State of New York in 1999.

Convention Days is celebrated in Seneca Falls each year to honor the first Women’s Rights Convention, held in Seneca Falls on July 19 and 20, 1848, to celebrate the great gains in women’s equality and freedom made in this country in the past 155 years and to focus attention on the unfinished work for women’s rights and equality world wide that continues today.

Other weekend events include a band concert at People's park Friday at 7 p.m. and at the Historical Society Sunday at 3 p.m. July 20 and dramatization of the first women’s rights convention on Saturday at 10:30 a.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m. in the Wesleyan Chapel at Women’s Rights Park.

-NPS-

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Updated: Wednesday, 22-Dec-2004 10:08:57 Eastern Standard Time
www.nps.gov/archive/wori/archives/novelloPR.htm
Author: David Malone