Elizabeth “Betsy” Randall-David

Betsy Randall-David

Elizabeth Randall-David, born in 1944, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, graduated from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, with a double major in psychology and zoology. She earned a master’s degree in psychology from the New School for Social Research in New York. Elizabeth Randall-David earned her RN and PhD in medical anthropology from the University of Florida after moving to Gainesville, Florida, from New York City in the fall of 1972, with her twin sons and her then-husband. At that time, she had wanted to become a midwife. The closest school offering nurse midwifery training was in South Carolina, so she shifted her interests to more general women’s health issues. When she entered nursing school at the University of Florida in 1973, she met there the women who cofounded the Gainesville Women’s Health Center (GWHC).

Elizabeth served as head of counseling when the GWHC opened in 1974, and she served as the executive director from 1975 to 1978. She met her life partner Sara (who was then known as Vicki) when she hired the woman as a counselor at the GWHC.  They have been together since 1978, and they live in Wilmington, North Carolina.

See also:

Barbara Esrig, “The Gainesville Women’s Health Center 1974-1997,” Sinister Wisdom 93 (Summer 2014): 42-43.