Cynthia A. Connolly, associate professor of nursing in the department of family & community health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The fellowship, one of the most prestigious in the humanities, will be used to complete her forthcoming book, Children, Drug Therapy, and Pharmaceuticals in the United States, 1906-1979.

Dr. Connolly’s book, which traces the development, use and marketing of pharmaceutical products for children, will be the first history of children and drugs. Even though almost every 20th-century law governing drug safety was enacted in response to a pediatric drug disaster, drug safety only improved for adults, not for children.

Dr. Connolly holds a secondary appointment in SAS’s history & sociology of science department and is also a Fellow at the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and the Alice Paul Center for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality.