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African-American Physician Honored for Her Career-Long Achievements

A third-generation scientist, Dr. Tanner has been in practice 48 years and serves as a pioneer in adolescent and academic medicine.

Dr. Natalia Tanner is a woman of many “firsts.” She was the first African- American resident at the University of Chicago in the 1940s; the first black board-certified pediatrician on staff at Children’s Hospital in the 1950s; the first African-American woman to become a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in 1951; and the first female and first African American to serve as president of the AAP’s Michigan chapter in 1983. In 2001, she is still breaking down racial and gender barriers, but she is most proud of the groundbreaking alliance she has formed to improve the health of infants, children and adolescents across the country.

Earlier this year, Dr. Tanner was the recipient of two prestigious honors from two important medical societies. She won the Outstanding Achievement in Adolescent Medicine Award from the Society for Adolescent Medicine (SAM), and the Distinguished Service Award from the National Medical Association (NMA). It is symbolic that she won both awards in the same year, since she initiated a partnership between the groups that continues today.

In 1969 and ‘70, many organizations were trying to provide children with access to health care, but few were working together, Dr. Tanner recalls. “At the same time, I was on the executive board of the Society of Adolescent Medicine; I was on the National Committee on Adolescence for the American Academy of Pediatrics; and I chaired the pediatric section of the National Medical Association. The NMA had 32,000 members who were mostly minority physicians. In 1970, I thought the NMA was doing great things, but needed the clout of a majority organization. I went to work and got a liaison committee established between the NMA and the AAP and I got the SAM involved, too. Together, these groups could address health issues, specifically for black children,” she said. “Now, these groups collaborate all the time. They have clearly increased access to health and improved the health status of all children.”

Dr. Tanner has been in private practice for 48 years and specializes in adolescent medicine. Although she began her career in pediatrics, she later specialized, based on her fascination with growth and development. “After prenatal development and the first two years of life, the next major burst of growth and development occurs in adolescence. This is intriguing to me,” Dr. Tanner said. She sees many African-American teens in her practice and believes she plays an important role in their lives. “I really bond with them,” she said. She takes some personal pride in the fact that 98 percent of her patients go to college.

Dr. Tanner during her chief residency at Meharry in 1948.

Dr. Tanner is a clinical professor of pediatrics who has been involved in minority recruitment for the School of Medicine and participated in Dr. Charles Whitten’s post-baccalaureate program for 10 years. “I was recruiting medical students and faculty members— minorities for the scene here,” she said. In fact, medicine is a way of life for her entire family. Her father, uncle, husband, daughter, son-inlaw, niece and nephew are all physicians. Her husband, Dr. Waldo Cain, is a surgeon and native Detroiter, and her daughter and son-in-law are both graduates of the WSU School of Medicine (Anita Cain Longs, ’91 and Curtis Longs, ’92).

Dr. Tanner began her college career at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1939 and then spent two years in a pre-medical program at the University of Chicago. She decided she wanted to attend a black professional school, so she transferred to Meharry and earned her medical degree 1945, where she was the fifth ranking honor student in a class of 65. She continued training with an internship at Harlem Hospital in New York, a pediatrics residency at the University of Chicago, and further training at Meharry’s Hubbard Hospital. She relocated in 1952 and became the first board-certified African- American pediatrician in Detroit. She was appointed to the WSU faculty in 1968 and was named clinical professor in 1992. She did a fellowship in adolescent medicine in 1994 and has been a contributing author to the premiere textbook in that field.

She continues to train WSU residents in her office and enjoys teaching new professionals. “I think there are four keys that have been critical to my success,” Dr. Tanner said. “You need the right personality, the right preparation, the right place and time, and the right connections. I have benefited from those elements, and I’d like to help others in the same way.”

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