With almost two hundred pages of original demographic and health-related maps that display county-by-county and regional information covering everything from the distribution of pharmacies, trauma centers, and emergency rooms to the number of lung, colon, and breast cancer patients in major metropolitan areas (by ZIP code), the Texas Health Atlas provides an indispensable tool for healthcare providers and planners, risk managers, public officials and policymakers, public health workers, and university researchers and students. The authors have mined an immense array of previously scattered information and created a singular resource that provides a geographical perspective on the state’s health care system, medical services, insidious diseases, harmful behaviors, and health disparities among various segments of its population. At a time when nearly a quarter of the 25 million people who live in Texas do not have health insurance—giving Texas the highest uninsured rate of any state—and as policymakers and legislators struggle with rising costs, an aging citizenry, and the prospect of more uncertainties for the healthcare system in the years ahead, the need for quick access to accurate information is greater than ever. Texas Health Atlas provides valuable insights that can guide the decisions needed for the state’s economic wellbeing and the improved health of its citizens.

The pioneering figures presented here have forged new paths for women in fields ranging from nursing, pharmacy, public health, and dentistry to general and hospital practice, hospice care, virology, surgery, and psychiatry. Their stories reveal the special obstacles they faced and overcame as women practicing in a demanding, traditionally all-male field. They also chronicle the history of medicine in the state generally since, although there was discrimination and resistance to accepting them, their accomplishments paralleled and in some instances led the development of medical practice and specialization. Using vignettes and biographical details garnered from sparse available literature, newspaper archives, typescripts found in various libraries around the state, and interviews, Elizabeth Silverthorne and Geneva Fulgham have created profiles of women ranging from traditional roles such as native herbalists and midwives through contemporary pioneers in fields like genetics and nuclear medicine. Drawing on subjects across the centuries throughout Texas' geographical regions and from diverse ethnic groups, they have painted rounded portraits of the women, showing their educational achievements, personalities, commitments, family lives, and hobbies. The stories of these pioneering women, told in clear and compelling prose, are fascinating and even inspiring. The accomplishments of the women heighten our understanding of the ways in which women have defied stereotype. Through personal persistence and dedication to their chosen fields, often against great odds, the women profiled here contributed to an elevated status for all women in the state.

"Index medicus" in v. 1-30, 1895-1924.