Description:
Discover why women must lead healthcare now - and how to get there. This practical, evidence-based guide helps women break barriers and lead with impact.
Brief description: Patricia A. Gabow, MD, MACP, is a national leader in delivery system innovation and the care of poor, uninsured, and vulnerable populations. She spent her career at Denver Health, a model healthcare safety-net institution, serving as CEO for the final 20 years before retiring in 2012. She is professor emerita of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and a Master of the American College of Physicians. Dr. Gabow has authored more than 140 articles and book chapters and three previous books: Lean The Prescription: Powerful Medicine for Our Ailing Healthcare System; TIME'S NOW for Women Healthcare Leaders: A Guide for the Journey; and The Catholic Church and Its Hospitals: A Marriage Made in Heaven? She was a founding member of the federal Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission and currently served for a decade on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Board. Her honors include the National Academy of Medicine's Gustav O. Lienhard Award, the AMA Nathan Davis Award for Outstanding Public Servant, and the AAMC David E. Rogers Award. She is a member of the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.
Review Quotes:
Dr. Patty Gabow is an icon - someone I have looked up to throughout my career. Having spent part of my career at the safety net with Dr. Gabow as CEO, I absorbed many of her leadership lessons by watching her in action. The Women's Guide to Healthcare Leadership reflects those transformative insights and offers practical wisdom for those seeking to lead with courage, integrity, and purpose. A must-read for anyone navigating the opportunities and challenges of leadership in healthcare.
Marisha Burden, MD, MBA
Professor of Medicine
Division Head of Hospital Medicine
University of Colorado School of Medicine
As a nurse leader, I deeply resonate with Patricia Gabow's message in The Women's Guide to Healthcare Leadership. This book is practical, profound, and values-driven, reminding us that great leadership is forged not only through success, but also through perseverance, resilience, gratitude, humor, and the willingness to do what is right under pressure. At a time when healthcare faces extraordinary complexity and challenge, this book speaks powerfully to nurses and other healthcare professionals who are called to lead with courage, clarity, and compassion. It equips women across healthcare to lead with conviction, humanity, and purpose when their leadership is needed most.
Jing Wang, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN
Dean
Florida State University College of Nursing
Dr. Patricia Gabow has done the work - from the front lines of clinical medicine to healthcare system CEO - and this book reflects the hard-won lessons of that journey. She confronts honestly both the failures of American healthcare and the persistent barriers women face within it, then delivers the practical frameworks, mentorship wisdom, and leadership tools needed to overcome them. Grounded in data, enriched by the voices of 10 accomplished women leaders, and written with the clarity of a physician who has diagnosed the problem and knows the cure, this is the guide every woman in healthcare needs to stop waiting for a seat at the table and start leading from wherever she stands.
Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, MBA
President Emerita, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation University Professor Emerita of
Health Policy and Equity at the University of Pennsylvania
No single person has made a greater contribution to healthcare policy and practice than Dr. Patricia Gabow. Her latest book offers significant insights regarding the women's healthcare leadership imperative, as well as invaluable advice on the path forward.
Sara Rosenbaum, JD
Emerita Professor, Health Law and Policy
Milken Institute School of Public Health
George Washington University
In a world where 69% of Americans believe having more women in leadership would improve their quality of life, why do we remain so shy of the mark? Dr. Gabow makes the case, as always using available evidence, that women's leadership in healthcare matters and then shows us the steps we need to take to make it happen. But don't take her word for it - be sure to read to the end so you can appreciate the wisdom of other women leaders who have risen to the highest positions of influence in our profession!
Nanette Santoro, MD
E. Stewart Taylor Professor of OBGYN
University of Colorado School of Medicine