1999 Iowa Women's Hall of Fame Honoree: Professor Mary Jaylene Berg (1950-2004)
"Dr. Mary Berg is the acknowledged leader in fostering the important role of women in pharmacy."
—Dr. Adrianne Bendich, 1997
Professor Mary Jaylene Berg of Iowa City is a worldwide leader in fostering the role of women in pharmacy and in the improvement of Women's health. In 1995, she became the first female promoted to professor in the College of Pharmacy at The University of Iowa since its founding in 1885. Berg has led international efforts to bring together women pharmacists in order to assure the inclusion of gender-related health issues in pharmacy curricula. Nationally, she has served as a charter member on the advisory committee that reviews the research strategy of the National Institutes of Health's Office of Research on Women's Health and presently serves on the board of directors of the Society for the Advancement of Women's Health Research. Berg's own research involves women with epilepsy who want to have a family. The multidisciplinary research team that she coordinates studies the potential for epileptic women to safely use folic acid-containing multivitamins to reduce the risk of adverse birth outcomes while they are taking anti-folate drugs to control seizures. Berg is the coeditor of four books, International Leadership Symposium: The Role of Women in Pharmacy (1990), Women - A Force in Pharmacy (1992), Gender-Related Health Issues: An International Perspective (1996), and Global Visions of Women Pharmacists (1998), and the author of 50 journal articles--almost all of which relate to Women's health. In 1992, she served as a Delegate to the 45th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland. A graduate of North Dakota State University and the University of Kentucky and a post-doctoral fellow at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Berg has been included in Who's Who in America, Who's Who of American Women, The World Who's Who of Women, Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in the Midwest, and Who's Who in Science and Engineering. Berg was born in 1950 in Fargo, North Dakota. Berg was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame in 1999.