"Rural Texas' maternal care infrastructure is crumbling"
storytelling CATEGORY — SHOWCASE certificate of merit
The Dallas Morning News
Emily Brindley, with additional support from José Luis Adriano (graphics), Shafkat Anowar (photos), Chitose Suzuki (photos), Alvie Lindsay (editing)
09/18/2025
In this project, I combined hard data with human stories to show the impact of rural Texas' growing maternity care deserts.
Nearly half of Texas counties are maternity care deserts, without a single obstetrician, certified midwife or birthing center. For pregnant women in rural Texas, that means it's a challenge to access pre-natal and postpartum care. In emergencies, it means a higher risk of complications and back-of-the-car deliveries.
And the problem is only growing more severe, as rural labor and delivery units struggle to keep their doors open.
To illustrate the scope of the problem, I toured a rural labor and delivery units, shadowed a rural doctor, talked to a dozen rural obstetrics providers and interviewed data experts, hospital CEOs and patients themselves. We paired that with data analysis and visualizations of obstetrics providers across the state.
The result was a project that pulls the reader into rural Texas and into the shoes of the patients and providers who are coping with a massive gap in the health care system.
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Submitted by Emily Brindley