Lula Olga Lubchenco (1915–2001) was an American pediatrician. Her family moved fromRussian Turkestan toSouth Carolina when she was a small child, and Lubchenco's higher education and career were spent almost entirely inColorado. After completing a pediatric residency inDenver, Lubchenco joined the faculty of theUniversity of Colorado School of Medicine and was the first director of the Premature Infant Center atColorado General Hospital.

Lubchenco was among the early physicians to suspect a link between oxygen administration and the eye condition that became known asretinopathy of prematurity. Her research intosmall for gestational age infants led to a chart that plotted birth weight against gestational age; the chart became known informally as the "Lulagram". Lubchenco remained involved with committees at the university until her death.

Lubchenco was born in Russian Turkestan in 1915.^[1] Lubchenco's mother, Portia McKnight Lubchenco, was an American physician and the first female to graduate from North Carolina Medical College. Portia Lubchenco met her husband Alexis, a Russian agronomist, when he came to the United States to learn to grow cotton. Alexis Lubchenco was a professor at theUniversity of Moscow and was friends with politicianAlexander Kerensky.^[2] Lula Lubchenco was the second of five children, and the family lived in Turkestan until Lubchenco was about two years old. The family made their way to the U.S. via China and the Pacific Ocean, ultimately settling on a farm in South Carolina.^[1]

In 1930, when theboll weevil damaged the family's crops, they moved to Northeast Colorado, where Lubchenco graduated from high school. She attendedDenver University and completed a medical degree from the University of Colorado School of Medicine in 1939. Lubchenco completed a rotating internship at Colorado General Hospital and began her pediatric training atStrong Memorial Hospital. In 1941, for family reasons, she returned to Denver to complete her pediatric residency and research fellowship at Denver Children's Hospital.^[1]

Lubchenco was a private-practice pediatrician and a faculty member at the University of Colorado School of Medicine for a short time before she was asked to head Colorado General Hospital's Premature Infant Center on what was supposed to be an interim basis. Early in her career, she worked with obstetrics chairman E. Stewart Taylor to hold collaborative training in neonatal resuscitation for obstetric and pediatric residents.^[1]

By 1950, Lubchenco noted that a high percentage of her former preterm patients were developing blindness from an eye condition known as retrolental fibroplasia (RLF), which was later renamed retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). She conducted a study that compared some of the Premature Infant Center's practices in the 1943–49 period (when RLF was rare) to the strategies that were in use by 1950. Evidence pointed to excessive oxygen administration as an important cause of RLF, and Lubchenco was able to greatly reduce the incidence of RLF in her center by managing the oxygen carefully, though it took several years before physicians at other hospitals were convinced of this connection.^[1]

In the early 1960s, Lubchenco began to publish her research on the relationship between birth weight and gestational age in newborns. A chart that allowed clinicians to plot a baby's birth weight against its gestational age became informally known as the "Lulagram". Before Lubchenco began her work, babies with low birth weights were referred to as premature. Her work led to the popularization of the termlow birth weight, which underscored the fact that such babies may or may not have been born early.^[3] The descriptorssmall for gestational age,appropriate for gestational age andlarge for gestational age originated with Lubchenco's work.^[4]

In 1973, theMedical College of Pennsylvania named Lubchenco the Medical Woman of the Year.^[5]

During her medical training, Lubchenco met and became engaged to Denver internist Carl Josephson. They married and had four daughters. The youngest daughter, Gretchen Josephson, was born withDown syndrome.^[6]

Lubchenco retired from clinical practice in 1977, but she remained a member of university committees until her death.^[1] TheUniversity of Colorado gave Lubchenco an honorary doctorate in 1989.^[7]

• 1915 births
• 2001 deaths
• People from Russian Turkestan
• American pediatricians
• American women pediatricians
• University of Denver alumni
• University of Colorado School of Medicine alumni
• University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus faculty
• Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States

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