Prior to the creation of Martha Eliot Health Center, Bromley-Heath community residents in need of pediatric health care would bring their children to a makeshift "well-baby" clinic in a woodworking room in Bromley Hall.

In 1957, Harvard University delegated Martha May Eliot, MD, a professor of Maternal and Child Health, to collaborate with the Boston Health Commissioner on the creation of a pilot healthcare program that would eventually become the Bromley-Heath Clinic.