Lois Johnson-Hamerman, a retired clinical professor from Penn’s School of Medicine and Pennsylvania Hospital neonatologist, died August 10 of pneumonia at Penn Hospice at Rittenhouse. She was 91.

Dr. Johnson-Hamerman was born in Newcomb, a small town in the New York Adirondacks. After graduating from Newcomb Central School, she earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in 1949 and a medical degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine in 1952. She completed an internship in adult medicine at the University of Minnesota Hospital and residencies in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati. From 1955 to 1958, she pursued advanced study at SUNY Brooklyn. Her focus was bilirubin-dependent brain damage and the genesis of kernicterus.

In 1958, she became an associate physician at Albert Einstein Hospital. In 1963, she moved to Philadelphia and joined Penn’s faculty as an associate professor in pediatrics and also served as an associate physician at both CHOP and Pennsylvania Hospital. She remained at Pennsylvania Hospital for 40 years while holding various teaching positions at Penn and at Thomas Jefferson University. She retired from Penn in 1999. 

She was closely affiliated with Parents of Infants and Children with Kernicterus (PICK). She developed the Kernicterus Data Registry, which helped spur awareness of the need to routinely screen newborns for jaundice before discharging them from the hospital. She also conducted early research into retinopathy as it occurs in premature infants.

In 1996, Dr. Johnson-Hamerman was awarded the Bilirubin Club Award for her leadership in research on newborn jaundice and prevention of bilirubin injury.

She is survived by her daughter, Sylvia Hamerman-Brown; a granddaughter; a brother; and a sister.