The AHS Index is a new way to look at data that illuminates a snapshot of our world today. It is intended to highlight health inequities and spark conversation, debate, outrage, and wonder.
Number of medical schools that rejected Elizabeth Blackwell, who would go on to become the first woman to obtain a medical degree, before she was finally accepted in 1847 by the all-male student body of Geneva Medical College (who thought her application was joke): 29
Year of birth of lab technician and nurse Mattiedna Johnson, who discovered and documented a strain of mold that she says became the life-saving antibiotic penicillin, for which she never received credit or compensation: 1918
Year that scientist Rosalind Franklin was hired by Maurice Wilkins, who immediately mistook her for a secretary and then later relied on her imaging work to win a Nobel Prize, for which she never received credit: 1951
Citations of the 1980s research of Flossie Wong-Staal, a scientist who first cloned HIV, a major step in linking HIV to AIDS: 7,800
Year that Ernestine Hambrick became the first board-certified colorectal surgeon, devoting her career to treating and raising awareness about colorectal cancer, a disease recognized every March: 1973
Year that women first accounted for a majority of U.S. students enrolled in medical school, which culminates in Match Day at the end of March: 2019
Percent increase in women practicing critical care medicine from 2004 to 2022: 392%
In gastroenterology: 219%
In urology: 215%