Dr. Elizabeth E. Cassinelli - Children Have a Potential, Pt. 2

 Since it is still, July, Disability Pride Month, let’s take a second look at the CHAP Program of Barksdale Air Force Base. CHAP, which stood for Children Have a Potential, was a pioneering program for handicapped children who were US Air Force dependents. The program was instituted Air Force wide in 1961 and Barksdale was one of the earliest bases to implement it. And on Barksdale, the medical services related to CHAP were coordinated by a pioneer in her own right, pediatrician Dr. E. Elizabeth Cassinelli.

Dr. Elizabeth Cassinelli was, as reported in her 1995 obituary, the first practicing female pediatrician in Shreveport. A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, she graduated from Mount St. Mary’s Academy there, and went to college at St. Mary of Woods in Terre Haute, Indiana. She received her M.D. Degree at Marquette University School of Medicine in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She served her internship at Milwaukee County General Hospital where also did two years of post-graduate work in pediatrics and worked with the Milwaukee Health Department. In Shreveport, in 1956, she first worked with Dr. G.P. Kelley at the Pediatric Clinic on Kings Highway, then in September, 1956 was appointed to the Caddo-Shreveport Health Unit, where she was assigned as the first trained pediatricians to “practice hygiene” (promote practices and principles for maintaining health) in Caddo schools and was in charge of the Well Baby Clinics. She later became the unit’s director before moving on to the pediatrics clinic of Barksdale Air Force Base.

Dr. Cassinelli monitored and coordinated the medical phase of the CHAP program at Barksdale and saw to its success by connecting the Air Force medical staff and the volunteer medical specialists needed for the program. The base newspaper for Barksdale, The Observer, on July 2, 1965, wrote that approximately 50 families at Barksdale have handicapped children. Their parents met monthly for lectures by specialists, subject authorities and parent support. Sometimes Dr. Cassinelli was the speaker. In the same issue of the Observer, Dr. Cassinelli gave an example of how this coordinated program was necessary and effective. There was a 7-year-old boy on base who had never been to school because he could not talk. Within 10 days, the CHAP program mobilized volunteer specialists from the community so that he could be seen by clinicians including an ear, nose and throat specialist, an orthodontist, a speech therapist, a psychologist and an orthopedist, so that a proper diagnosis was made and the proper treatment could begin.

Dr. Cassinelli practiced pediatrics at Barksdale for 32 years until her retirement. In her private life, she was Dr. Elizabeth C. Prince (and later Dr. Elizabeth Moore after her first husband passed away and she remarried). She and her husband raised four children, the oldest of whom was just six weeks old when she started her job at the Shreveport-Caddo health unit. She was known in the community for children’s services and her advocacy for women and for diversity in medicine. In fact, Dr. Cassinelli’s work was so well-admired among her peers that the Louisiana Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics gives out a bi-annual award named after her for special efforts towards women’s careers in pediatrics.

Dr. Cassinelli also served on the committee to evaluate the Shreveport-Bossier Committee on Mental Retardation and organized the Northwest Louisiana Pediatric Society, where served in every office, and personally arranged up to 4 lectureships annually for the members. She also served in the Shreveport Catholic Physicians Guild, and on the Board of Trustees of Loyola College Prep (where a scholarship fund is named for her and first husband David Prince, Jr.) Even after retirement, Dr. Cassinelli served at the LSU School of Medicine in Shreveport as Director of Pediatric Outreach Services, where she was serving at the time of her death following a brief illness in 1995, at the age of 69.

If you have any information, stories, or photos about Dr. Cassinelli, the CHAP program at Barksdale or other special stories about life on Base or in Bossier, we would love to see them or to copy them, with permission, to add to the History Center’s research collection. Please come to the History Center to do research or see our exhibits at 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

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Images: 

Announcement of Dr. Elizabeth Cassinelli’s appointment to the Shreveport-Caddo Health Unit in the Shreveport Times on 16 September, 1956

Photo of Dr. Elizabeth Cassinelli and her four children in the Shreveport Times on 31 October, 1965

Article by: Pam Carlisle