But access to medical education and hospital training was not easy in coming.

UAB celebrates the role of women in medicine and highlights their journey with the traveling exhibit, Changing the Face of Medicine, on display in the Alabama Museum of the Health Sciences through Feb. 15. The museum is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the third floor of the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences.

“We will be the only venue in Alabama to have this exhibit,” says Stefanie Rookis, curator of the museum. “It’s a fantastic exhibit. It’s not just about honoring past and present female physicians, it’s also about inspiring new ones.”

UAB competed with other institutions and libraries to receive the exhibit, which also is interactive.

Patrons are invited to nominate women doctors for a Local Legends page through the National Institutes of Health Web site at www.nlm.nih.gov/locallegends. Visitors also can add their own stories about inspirational women physicians at www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/shareyourstory.

“You don’t have to be a female physician or patient to add a story,” Rookis says. “You or your family just has to have been touched by a female physician in some way.”

The exhibition Web site, located at www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine, features biographies of more than 330 women physicians who have practiced medicine in the past 150 years. Visitors can browse through hundreds of photographs, search the physician database, watch a series of short films and review resources for planning a career in medicine. Diann Jordan will discuss “Sisters in Science: Conversations with Black Women Scientists on Race, Gender and the Passion for Science” during the Reynolds Historical Lecture Wednesday, Jan. 9 at noon in the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences. Jordan, of Alabama State University, is an Alabama Humanities Foundation Road Scholar.

Inside look at change
Hughes Evans, M.D., Ph.D., senior associate dean for academic affairs at the UAB School of Medicine, spoke at the exhibition opening reception in December on the influence of women on the practice of medicine. She says the exhibit enables visitors to grasp the rich history of women in medicine and the struggles they endured.

“It gives you an inside look at how women have impacted and changed medicine through the past 160-plus years,” Evans said.

The interactive component of the exhibit makes it unique, Evans says.

On the Web site at www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine, visitors can identify doctors by state, specialty, ethnicity or the school they attended and find biographies and background information. You can find out more about pioneering women in health care such as Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to earn a medical degree in 1849, to Halle Dillon, the first woman to be a licensed physician in Alabama.

“Halle Dillon became the state’s first licensed female doctor in 1891 and she was an African-American woman,” Evans says. “She had to take a 10-day licensing exam and passed it. Her story, like so many others, is just fascinating.”

Looking ahead
Evans says the exhibit illuminates thinking about ways the medical field can be more accepting of women, particularly in certain specialties where women are under-represented.

The field of medicine certainly is attracting more female students. Evans points to statistics that show almost 50 percent of medical students nationwide are female – up from 7 percent as recently as the 1970s. That’s proof that barriers are continuing to fall, she says.

“We are seeing change in the face of medicine. It is becoming equally male and female,” Evans says. “There has been huge progress made but there still are areas in which there is room for improvement. I think that is true for all groups that are under-represented in medicine.”

Changing the Face of Medicine was developed by the Exhibition Program of the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine in collaboration with the American Library Association Public Programs Office. Additional support comes from the National Institutes of Health Office of Research on Women’s Health and American Medical Women’s Association.