Betty Leifer, retired information system manager at Penn’s Clinical Research Center, expert statistician, and community activist, has died at 83

Betty Leifer, 83, formerly of Philadelphia, retired information system manager at the University of Pennsylvania’s Clinical Research Center, former information project analyst at Pennsylvania Hospital, onetime statistician for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, community activist, and volunteer, died Saturday, July 6, of liver cancer at the Freedom Village at Brandywine retirement community in Coatesville.

Adept at math, statistics, research, and collaboration, Mrs. Leifer used her talents over 30 years to educate and support many researchers at Penn, analyze statistical data at Pennsylvania and Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, and supervise important surveys, studies, and reports for the health department’s Division of Statistics and Research.

She installed hardware and software, and handled all data management needs for groups at Penn from 1984 until her retirement in 1992. Earlier, she was a research assistant at Penn’s Population Studies Center.

She tutored the administrative and medical staffs at Pennsylvania and Jefferson Hospitals on the use of statistical data in the early 1980s, and she collected revealing information about immunizations, suicide prevention, children’s health, nursing services, and other programs for the city’s health department from 1961 to 1964. In 1966, she coauthored a paper for the health department called “Suicide and Family Disorganization.”

She was an outspoken activist for social justice, championed racial equality and government transparency, and served as an administrator and representative in 1978 for what is now the Common Cause Pennsylvania nonpartisan good government group.

She wrote letters to the editor at The Inquirer about many issues and was quoted in a 1971 article about her nine-block nightly walks along Pine Street in Center City. She called that stretch “the safest place in the world.”

She said in a 1975 letter to the editor that quality education in every school should be the focus of integrating Philadelphia schools since students “will accept each other because they are all there for the same purpose.” In a 1978 letter to the editor, she said attempts to suppress public information about police brutality accusations were “an insult to the citizens of Philadelphia.”

“She was passionate about her causes,” said her daughter Stephanie.

Mrs. Leifer tutored visually impaired students at Montgomery County Community College and helped clients at the Montgomery County Association for the Blind in all sorts of ways. After overhearing a nearby shopper struggle to make a purchase, she established a free shopping assistance program for the visually impaired at the Montgomery Mall in 1996 and became its first trained assistant.

“It dawned on me that a mall is just not accessible,” she told The Inquirer. “It became clear that this shopping help was desperately needed.”

She read newspapers on air and narrated two Thanksgiving Day parades at the radio information center of the Associated Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired on Walnut Street. She taped audio books and magazines for listeners, and helped seniors and others navigate applications and tax forms.

She supported Planned Parenthood, led registration drives for the League of Women Voters, and supported the unsuccessful 1976 recall movement of former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo. In an online tribute, friends said her family was “kind of an inspiration for us.”

“Betty was a dedicated and passionate volunteer who spent countless hours on various community issues over many decades,” her family said in a tribute.

Betty Rabinowitch was born Sept. 22, 1940, in Philadelphia. She grew up in the city’s Northeast, was a whiz with numbers, and loved to read books of all kinds at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

She graduated from Olney High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in math at Temple University in 1962 and master’s degree in demography and statistics at Penn in 1980.

She met Phil Leifer in Atlantic City, and they married in 1961 and had daughters Adrienne, Jennifer, and Stephanie. They lived for years in Center City and moved later to Lansdale and then Freedom Village.

Mrs. Leifer was an expert with the auditorium’s audiovisual equipment at Freedom Village, and friends called her “an enthusiastic member” of the book club, movie committee, and theatrical group. She read to other residents, walked daily around the complex, and she and her husband contributed often to the residents’ website.

Family and friends enjoyed her humor and knowledge of technology. She inspired a grandson’s interest in chemistry when he was young, and he recently dedicated his doctoral dissertation to her.

Most of all, her daughter Stephanie said, “She was very loving.” Her husband said: “She was an awesome woman.”

In addition to her husband and daughters, Mrs. Leifer is survived by seven grandchildren and other relatives. A sister died earlier.

Donations in her name may be made to the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation, Box 7512, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101; Blue Faery’s Adrienne Wilson Liver Cancer Association, 1919 Oxmoor Rd., Suite 257, Birmingham, Ala. 35209; and the American Liver Foundation, Box 299, West Orange, N.J. 07052.