Elsie A. Giorgi (c. 1911 – June 19, 1998) was an American physician who worked at

Bellevue Hospital Bellevue Hospital (officially NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue and formerly known as Bellevue Hospital Center) is a hospital in New York City and the oldest public hospital in the United States. One of the largest hospitals in the United States b ...

in New York City before moving to

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a nonprofit, tertiary, 886-bed teaching hospital and multi-specialty academic health science center located in Los Angeles, California. Part of the Cedars-Sinai Health System, the hospital employs a staff of over 2 ...

in Los Angeles.

Life

Giorgi was born in

The Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

, New York City, to Italian immigrant parents; she was the youngest of ten siblings. After attending

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...

on a scholarship, she worked for a trucking company for twelve years before she could afford the tuition fees to attend the

Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S) is the graduate medical school of Columbia University, located at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. Founded i ...

. She graduated from Columbia in 1949. Giorgi began her career at

where she spent ten years rising from an intern to chief of clinics, while also running a private practice in Manhattan and working at a clinic in

East Harlem East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or and historically known as Italian Harlem, is a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City, roughly encompassing the area north of the Upper East Side and bounded by 96th Street to the south, F ...

. She relocated to

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

in 1961 for a psychiatry residency at

, running the center's clinic and setting up a home-care program. In 1967, she established Watts Health Center, a free clinic funded by the

Office of Economic Opportunity The Office of Economic Opportunity was the agency responsible for administering most of the War on Poverty programs created as part of United States President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society legislative agenda. It was established in 1964 as an i ...

, in the low-income neighborhood of

Watts Watts is plural for ''watt'', the unit of power. Watts may also refer to: People *Watts (surname), list of people with the surname Watts Fictional characters *Watts, main character in the film '' Some Kind of Wonderful'' *Watts family, six chara ...

after she was "appalled" by the health of local children whom she had volunteered to examine as part of the Head Start program. She also ran a private practice in

Beverly Hills Beverly Hills is a city located in Los Angeles County, California. A notable and historic suburb of Greater Los Angeles, it is in a wealthy area immediately southwest of the Hollywood Hills, approximately northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Bev ...

which served a wealthy clientele including numerous celebrities. She was a medical adviser on the 1991 film '' The Doctor'' and the television series '' Diagnosis: Murder''. Giorgi never married; she once told a reporter, "I am Italian, so that means Italian men who want a docile wife and lots of babies. Do you see any trace of a docile person in my eyes?" She died in Los Angeles in 1998 from a heart attack.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Giorgi, Elsie 1998 deaths Physicians from New York City People from the Bronx 20th-century American women physicians 20th-century American physicians Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons alumni Hunter College alumni American people of Italian descent Members of the National Academy of Medicine