Dr.Yvette Fay Francis-McBarnette
(May 10, 1926 – March 28, 2016)
Pediatrician
Pioneered the treatment children with sickle cell anemia
Co-Founder of Foundation for Research and Education in Sickle Cell Disease
Yvette was born in Kingston Jamaica, West Indies medical pioneer in treating children with sickle cell anemia. Raised in Harlem. to schoolteachers Clarence and Sarah Francis. The family migrated to the United States of America and resided in New York City when she was a toddler. She graduated from Hunter College High School at the age of 14. After High School she was enrolled at Hunter College where she completed a Bachelor’s Degree in chemistry, followed by a Master’s Degree in chemistry at Columbia University. In 1946, she was one of the youngest of age to enroll at the Yale School of Medicine – she was the second black woman at the school. Francis-McBarnett completed her pediatric residency at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. She returned to school in 1978, to complete a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in hematology at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center. Her first medical position was at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. After spending time she became director of the sickle cell anemia clinic at Jamaica Hospital Medical Centre in Queens, New York and managed the St Albans Family Medical Center.
In 1966, together with colleagues Dr. Doris Wethers and Dr. Lila Fenwick, she started the Foundation for Research and Education in Sickle Cell Disease. Dr.Yvette Fay Francis-McBarnette researched and used prophylactic antibiotics with her patients which came in with positive results, although the effectiveness was not confirmed until fifteen years later in an article in The New England Journal of Medicine. By 1970 her clinic had screened over 20,000 school children for the disease, placing those with the disease on antibiotics, which some continued to take throughout their lives.
Then President Richard Nixon invited to join a White House committee focusing on effective management of the disease. The committee’s work led to the 1972 National Sickle Cell Anemia Control Act, signed by the President, which used federal funds for screening, counseling, education and research. Tournaments at her summer getaway on Martha’s Vineyard. She was a lifelong learner who in her mid-70s took philosophy classes in the graduate program at Hunter College. In 2003, she and her husband moved from New York to Virginia to be near their grandchildren. She was deeply religious. and enjoyed Bible study and singing in the choir at the Episcopal chapel of Goodwin House, the retirement community where she lived with her husband. Through her passion and vision for the treatment of Sickle Cell she was given the recognition by the world of medicine that she was able to successfully used antibiotics to treat Children with the issue before her passing on March 28, 2016 in Alexandria, Virginia at the age of 89. Dr. Francis leaves behind to cherish her memory her loving husband Olvin McBarnette; her children Bruce, Camilla, Yvette, Elayne Sara, Ellen and Andrea; her grandchildren Nettie McMiller, and Baily and Taylor Moore; her brother Mac Francis; and numerous nephews, nieces.