Mission work and tuberculosis clinic

Noble practiced medicine in Colorado after completing her medical degree. She taught and practiced at the Woman's Medical College in Ludhiana as a Presbyterian medical missionary from 1906 to 1909.^[3] She served women who would not, for religious reasons, be seen by male doctors. She published pamphlets based on this work, The Mission Station as a Social Settlement, Hospital Work in India, and Baby And Mother Welfare Work In India.^[4][5]

She settled again in Colorado Springs, where she was medical director at a free tuberculosis clinic in the 1910s.^[4][6] In 1911 she toured with other women missionaries nicknamed the "Jubilee Troupe"^[7] engaged to speak at the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society jubilee celebrations in various cities^[8][9] including Denver, Boston, New York^[10] and Washington.^[11] She addressed the annual conference of the Colorado State Union of Student Volunteers in Denver in 1914.^[12]

World War I

In 1917 and 1918, during World War I, she served on the YWCA's war council, and gave a series of talks on "sex hygiene" and "social morality" in southern and western cities, including Nashville,^[13] Salt Lake City,^[14] Tulsa, Austin,^[15] Topeka,^[16] and Wichita.^[17] "Her message will be most timely on account of the present emotional strain to which men and women are subjected," commented a Nashville newspaper.^[13] "Her lectures will urge morality as the greatest of all patriotic war work," explained a Utah newspaper.^[14]

Pennsylvania Department of Health

In the 1920s and 1930s, Noble was chief of the Preschool Division and head of the Division of Child Hygiene in the Pennsylvania Department of Health.^[4] In that role she wrote A Manual for Expectant Mothers, a brief publication on childbirth.^[18] She reported on the effort to regulate midwifery in Pennsylvania,^[19] and made reducing newborn and maternal mortality priorities of the state's health department.^[20][21] She encouraged churches to include health information in their education programs, and to open clinics for children.^[22] She testified at a Senate hearing on implementation of the Sheppard–Towner Act in 1932.^[23] She opposed "baby parades" as "deplorable exploitation of childhood" in a 1932 lecture at her alma mater, the Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia.^[24]

Professional honors

In 1937, Noble was elected treasurer of the American Medical Women's Association.^[25] 1949, she became the first recipient of the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal, for making "pathways for other women in medicine", and as a leader in women's health.^[26][27] She was a fellow of the American College of Physicians, a life member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and a fellow of the American Medical Association.^[28]

Noble was a longtime volunteer with the Girl Scouts. When she retired from that work in 1958, she was presented with a bronze statuette from the Susquehanna Council of Girl Scouts.^[29]