Cuyahoga County Board of Health history

Founded in part by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1938, who was himself a victim of polio, the NFIP was the predecessor to the March of Dimes.

Doctor Jonas Salk had presented his findings for a cure to the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in 1953, which then took a “calculated risk” by helping to make the vaccine available to groups of children across 38 states.

POLIO PIONEERS More than 1.6 million children, known as “polio pioneers,” participated in the polio vaccine trials of 1954.

Lambright Jr. and his father both founded Forest City Hospital, which opened in 1957, in order to provide black physicians with the opportunity to head medical departments.

In 1964, Lambright Jr. became the second black doctor in the nation to head a local affiliate of the American Medical Association when he became president of the Academy of Medicine of Cleveland.

H. Bernard Smith, the first Director of the Cuyahoga County Community Mental Health and Retardation Board in 1968, and a true friend of the Cuyahoga County mental health and addiction community, authored two documents that highlight the history of community mental health in Cuyahoga County.

Tennessee was the first state to require car seats for children in 1978.

Over the next eighteen months, this plan guided the efforts of the two organizations in creating the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services (ADAMHS) Board of Cuyahoga County, which opened July 1, 2009.