Dr. B. Healy, 67, health leader

Dr. Bernadine Healy, 67, the first woman to direct the National Institutes of Health and the leader of the American Red Cross at the time of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, has died.

Dr. Healy died Saturday at her home in the suburbs of Cleveland of recurring brain cancer, which she had battled for 13 years, her husband, Dr. Floyd D. Loop, said, according to the New York Times.

Dr. Healy headed the NIH under President George H.W. Bush. Forceful, outspoken, and a strong advocate for women's health, she appeared frequently on TV news shows to talk about health issues and wrote a column for U.S. News and World Report.

"I always try not to be strident, but I do try to be forceful about things that are right," she once said.

Her tenure at the NIH during the early 1990s was marked by internal struggles and battles with Congress.

She left Washington after President Bill Clinton decided not to appoint her to another term. She ran for the Senate from Ohio, where she lost badly in the GOP primary.

She became dean of the Ohio State University medical school and then president at the Red Cross in 1999.

Disagreements with the board at the nation's largest charity led to her resignation just two months after 9/11. Dr. Healy said she was forced out in part over differences with what to do with nearly $500 million that the Red Cross raised after the 2001 attacks.

She became a familiar face at the sites of the attacks and also organized a White House blood drive and filmed a public-service announcement. But blood experts criticized her for encouraging more donations than needed to treat the relatively few survivors in New York.

She also came under fire for initially refusing to go along with a coordinated effort to track assistance to recipients and for her plans to use financial donations for 9/11 relief efforts to create a strategic blood reserve and prepare for future terror attacks.

Dr. Healy, a native of Queens, N.Y., earned her medical degree from Harvard University. She won a professorship at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and became a science adviser to President Ronald Reagan in 1984.