An Unexpected but Fruitful Combination.

During the Progressive Era, health concerns spurred the development of many innovative efforts to bring modern medicine to underserved populations. One of the most creative and instructive efforts emerged from home economics. For a twenty-first-century audience, home economics may seem a strange topic for a discussion on interprofessional education and practice in health care. After all, for some, home economics conjures the image of cooking and sewing. For others, it means FACE-family and consumer education. Yet the history of home economics' formative years in the early twentieth century offers a singular and useful example for the building of effective and efficient synergies for the promotion of health. Though similar events occurred on other campuses where home economics flourished, the details presented in this article are drawn from the history of the University of Wisconsin and the innovations of two formidable women, Abby Marlatt and Dorothy Reed Mendenhall.Like many other pioneers in the field, Abby Marlatt firmly believed that for women, home economics education, that is a science-informed education, was the basis for improving the lives of families and, by extension, the nation. "Woman today," she insisted, "is responsible for the conserving of life and health."1 Born into a family interested in teaching, writing, and agricultural issues, Marlatt earned her BS (Domestic Science) in 1888 and her MS (Domestic Economy) in 1890, following which she organized the domestic economy department at Utah State Agricultural College in Logan, Utah (1890-1894) and a home economics department at the Manual Training High School in Providence, Rhode Island (1894-1909). Harry L. Russell, dean of the College of Agriculture at the University of Wisconsin, recognized her abilities and asked her to come to Wisconsin to develop a department of home economics. Marlatt joined the University of Wisconsin faculty in 1909 and remained until her retirement in 1939. She was not only influential in establishing home economics at the university but was also a potent force in home economics on the national scene, providing direction at the several Lake Placid Conferences that established the parameters of the early movement as well as shaping the American Home Economics Association.2One of the first courses Marlatt designed and taught at the University of Wisconsin was "Humanics," in which students studied the development of the individual from infancy to adolescence and discussed issues of hygiene and medical developments in light of influences such as heredity and nutrition as well as housing conditions and sanitary living. Humanics was a required course, but it was also very popular. Former students would write to Marlatt, extolling the value of the course. Typical was a note accompanying a photo of a toddler, James, sent to Marlatt in 1923. The mother proudly announced:Raised according to Miss Marlatt's valuable instruction-no wonder he's so fat and healthy!Another mother was more specific, claiming:I have often wanted to write you how much Home Ec has meant to me and what a help it has always been. Particularly this was true just before and since R. was born. He is a fine, strong, happy boy! Humanics is an invaluable course!3Humanics gave Marlatt a platform from which she could teach university students health and childcare issues.4 But only a relatively small number of women attended university at this time.Marlatt had the answer to this limitation in university extension: the embodiment of the "Wisconsin Idea." Articulated by university president Charles Van Hise in 1904, the "Wisconsin Idea" is the conviction that the walls of the university equal the borders of the state, that is, the expertise of the university should benefit the citizens of the state. With this in mind, Marlatt's predecessor had initiated annual Housekeeper's Conferences, inviting women from across the state to Madison for a week of lectures on topics in home economics broadly defined; Marlatt expanded the conferences to two weeks. …