Dr. Janet B. Hardy, a nationally known Johns Hopkins medical researcher and pediatric epidemiologist whose Collaborative Perinatal Project heavily influenced the development of neonatology and fetal medicine, died of complications from a stroke Oct. 23 at Glen Meadows retirement community. She was 92.
"Janet Hardy was the pioneer in linking maternal age, nutrition and health with fetal development and early child development," said Dr. George J. Dover, director of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and chairman of the department of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
"Her determination and tenacity yielded research findings that have benefited generations of healthier newborns, children and adults," he said.
Dr. Hardy, the daughter of an internist, was born in Duncan, British Columbia, and raised in Victoria, British Columbia.
She said she decided on pursuing a medical career after her father told her, "No daughter of mine is ever going to be a physician."
Dr. Hardy was a 1937 graduate of the University of British Columbia and earned her medical degree from McGill University's medical school in 1941.
She interned for a year at the Children's Memorial Hospital in Montreal before joining the staff of the Harriet Lane Home of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1942.
In 1944, she became director of the tuberculosis clinic at the home and was the first pediatrician to serve as director of the nursery for newborn children at Hopkins from 1945 to 1949.
In 1951, she left Hopkins when she was appointed director of the Baltimore City Health Department's Bureau of Child Hygiene and later became assistant commissioner of health for preventive medicine.
Dr. Hardy returned to Hopkins in 1957 when she became director of the Collaborative Perinatal Project, or CPP, a federal 12-site study, and a rubella study that followed about 60,000 pregnant women and their 58,000 children for two decades.
The purpose of the study sought to find answers to the high rates of premature births and maternal and infant mortality that was commonplace in America during the 1950s.
"It was estimated that some 20 million Americans suffered from disabilities, including cerebral palsy, epilepsy, mental retardation, and defects of vision, hearing, learning, and communication," according to a profile of Dr. Hardy that was published by the Johns Hopkins Magazine in 2005.
