Her first important research, community studies of rickets in New Haven, Connecticut, and Puerto Rico, explored issues at the heart of social medicine.

Park, her research established that public health measures (dietary supplementation with vitamin D) could prevent and reverse the early onset of rickets.

[2] During undergraduate study at Bryn Mawr College she met Ethel Collins Dunham, who was to become her life partner.

After the war, she held influential positions in both the World Health Organization and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

In 1959, Martha accepted a post as chair of the Massachusetts Commission on Children and Youth, a position she held for a decade.

Lillian Faderman, the landmark scholar, writes: "[At] Bryn Mawr.. she met a twenty-six year old freshman, Ethel Dunham.

As a couple, Martha Eliot and Ethel Dunham.. succeeded in times that were as unsympathetic to professional women as they were to lesbians.

[5] Bert Hansen writes: "While Dunham and Eliot are each worthy of individual attention, their shared personal life has such an intimate connection with their careers that a combined narrative better illustrates their close relationship of 59 years.

They achieved major professional positions at Yale, at Harvard, and in government, even while they were making careful career choices to maintain the continuity of their domestic partnership.