Stories from Texas Medicine, December 2021

Counting on Women’s Health: Texas Takes Steps to Fix Maternal Mortality Data - 11/23/2022

There is a lot of confusion about how cases of maternal death and illness are counted in Texas, and the work of unraveling that confusion falls on the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee.

Compact for Care: Texas Joins Interstate Agreement for Out-of-State Licensure - 10/13/2022

The rise of telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a change in state law that will not only help make certain telemedicine services permanent but also give out-of-state physicians an easier pathway to join the Texas workforce.

Strength in Numbers: Women Physicians Seek to Change the Culture of Medicine - 09/22/2022

In Texas, women accounted for 36% of active physicians as of September, just under the national rate of 37% and more than double their share 25 years ago. They now outnumber men among Texas medical school enrollees, suggesting they may account for most of the physician workforce in future decades.

Ten Years Later: TMA Advocacy Nets Investments in Women’s Health - 07/27/2022

A decade ago, the Texas Legislature made a funding decision that devasted low-income women’s access to health care and the physicians and community clinics that care for them. After 10 years, with the help of TMA advocacy and the formation of the Texas Women’s Healthcare Coalition, funding for family planning and overall women’s health is in significantly better shape.

Martha Pugh, MD: One of TMA’s longest-Serving Members Flourished in Male-Dominated Medicine - 12/01/2021

After growing up on a South Alabama cattle farm in the 1940s and ’50s, Martha Pugh, MD, went on to have a 51-year career in a different male-dominated field: medicine. Often one of few women in the building, whether at medical school or in hospitals, Dr. Pugh – now 82 and retired – found common ground with her male peers and went on to become one of the Texas Medical Association’s longest-serving members for 42 years.

A Texas Trailblazer: May Owen, MD, a Medical Pioneer and TMA’s First Female President - 12/01/2021

On May 27, 1936, May Owen, MD, answered a scientific riddle in a speech before the Texas Medical Association, explaining research that would soon make her a statewide celebrity. Dr. Owen’s pioneering work continued in the decades to come, making her the first female president of the Texas Society of Pathologists in 1946, the first female president of the Tarrant County Medical Society in 1947, and the first female president of TMA in 1960.