This is a 3-part question:

1) Which 100 cities or zip codes (either parameter is fine) in the
continental U.S. have the lowest number of dermatologists per capita

2) Which 100 cities or zip codes in the continental U.S. have the
fastest growing population (define this however you wish)?

3) Weighing each of these two variables equally, which 50 cities or
zip codes have the highest overall score rating for both questions
combined?

Thank you very much! Let me know if this is unclear at all.

Dear Porter,

Thank you for your question regarding demographics of 100 cities
in the US with the highest growth rates and lowest number of
Dermatologists in that area.

As per your request I have reduced this number to only 50 cities.

I have used the US census data for the period covering 1990-2000
as a basis for this answer using the city/Metro area rather
than the Zip codes and cross referencing this information with 
the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) online database.
I selected the highest growth rates and the lowest number of
dermatologists in an area. 

In the interest of saving time and space, I am only including the 
growth rate percentage for these cities rather than the 
actual population figures. In addition, I am providing you the
number of Dermatalogists listed in the AAD database in a separate
column.

Please note that these dermatalogists are members of the AAD
and the list does not include none members.

City/Area	Growth rate %     No. of Dermatologists (AAD members)

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Las Vegas, NV	83.3%			21

Yuma,AZ		49.7			2

McAllen-
Edinburg-
Mission, TX	48.5			5

Fayetteville
-Springdale
-Rogers, AK	47.5			4

Laredo,TX	44.9			2

Provo-
Orem, UT	39.8			7


Myrtle Beach
,SC		36.5			6

Wilmington, 
NC		36.3			8


Fort Collins
--Loveland, CO	35.1			7


Orlando, FL	34.4			12


Reno, NV 	33.3			12


Ocala, FL	32.9			9


Fort Myers
--Cape Coral
,FL		31.6			12


Bellingham, WA	30.5			6


Colorado 
Springs, CO	30.2			0

Dallas
--Fort Worth,
TX		29.3			0

Charlotte
--Gastonia
--Rock Hill, NC	29			0

Brownsville
--Harlingen
--San Benito,
TX		28.9			3

Las Cruces,	
NM 		28.9			5

Richland
--Kennewick
--Pasco, WA	27.9			3

Punta Gorda, 
FL		27.6			0


Santa Fe, NM 	26.1			6


Bryan
--College Station, 
TX 		25.1%			4


Nashville, TN	25.0%			26


Medford
--Ashland, OR	23.8			7


Killeen
--Temple, TX	22.6			5


Lawrence, KS 	22.2			1


Missoula, MT	21.8			4


Sacramento
--Yolo, CA	21.3			35


Barnstable
--Yarmouth, MA	20.5			0


Modesto, CA 	20.6			6

Pensacola, FL	19.7			9


Melbourne
--Titusville
--Palm Bay, FL	19.4			8

Lakeland
--Winter Haven,
FL		19.4			10

Jonesboro, AR	19.1			2


Clarksville
--Hopkinsville, 
TN--KY		22.2			1

Santa Fe, NM	26.1			6

Sioux Falls,
SD		23.8			11

Springfield, MO	23.2			12

Tallahassee, 
FL		21.8			8

Charlottesville
, VA		21.7			14

Columbia, MO	20.5			10


Sarasota
--Bradenton, 
FL 		20.5			26

Columbia, SC	18.4			20

Jackson, TN 	18.3			6

Merced, CA	18			2

Lexington, KY 	18			17

Visalia
--Tulare
--Porterville,
CA		18			5

Yakima, WA	17.9			4

Asheville, NC	17.8			9



P.S: Some metro areas have no AAD members listed in the AAD database.

For US government census data please use the following URLs:

http://eire.census.gov/popest/archives/place/SC100K-T2.txt 

http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t3/tab05.txt 

http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/phc-t3.html 

For the American Academy of Dermatology(AAD) online database please
visit:

http://www.aad.org/DermSearch/dbsearchcity.html

Hope you found this information useful. I would be glad to provide you
with more detailed information if you wish.

Please let me know if you require any further clarification(s).

Seeker

---

Request for Answer Clarification by porter-ga on 26 Apr 2002 17:16 PDT

This data is very intriging. In looking at the AAD membership
component, take Dallas TX for example, there are no dermatologists who
are members. In reality, however, I know that Dallas, TX has a high
density of dermatologists. Perhaps a better technique who be to use
phone book listings of Derm office practices or some other data source
than the AAD membership database.

Also, in terms of measuring population growth, the main point is to
figure out where the greatest number of people are moving to Given
that, using rate as the expression of growth might be misleading in so
far small cities can grow at higher rates but still not be home to
very many people. So one way to approach this would be to stratify
cities into size groups <50K, 50-100k, 100K-200K, etc. But I would
rather develop an algebreic function. So another idea is to multiply
the rate times the population to get an actual number of people and
use this as an expression of annual growth in the function to generate
an index.

What do you think?

---

Clarification of Answer by seeker-ga on 29 Apr 2002 12:18 PDT

Dear Porter 

As per your request I have used absolute positive change numbers from
the US census(1990-2000) and also looked at the Yellowpages.com site
to obtain some more information about the number of Dermatalogists in
these Metropolitan areas
listed in the yellow pages.

I have included the AAD membership information in the next column for
further reference.

As you can observe both New York and Los Angeles are now on top of the
list
as they are such large cities with large populations.Additionally,
both of these
cities show a lack of correlation between number of Dermatalogists
listed in the Yellow pages versus the AAD membership list.

City / Metro Area 	

Absloute 	Yellowpages.COM		AAD members
Positive 	---------------         -----------
Change		

Los Angeles--Riverside--Orange County, CA CMSA
1,842,116		6			75

New York--Northern New Jersey--Long Island, NY--NJ--CT--PA CMSA
1,650,216		29			286

Dallas--Fort Worth, TX CMSA
1,184,519		14			0


Atlanta, GA MSA
1,152,248		7			73

Phoenix--Mesa, AZ MSA
1,013,396		3			33

Houston--Galveston--Brazoria, TX CMSA
938,440			13			87

Chicago--Gary--Kenosha, IL--IN--WI CMSA	
917,720			10			76

Washington--Baltimore, DC--MD--VA--WV CMSA
881,020			3			102

San Francisco--Oakland--San Jose, CA CMSA
786,051			6			110

Las Vegas, NV--AZ MSA
710,545			6			21

Miami--Fort Lauderdale, FL CMSA
683,798			7			84

Denver--Boulder--Greeley, CO CMSA
601,366			7			37

Seattle--Tacoma--Bremerton, WA CMSA
584,432			4			60

Portland--Salem, OR--WA CMSA
471,747			10			34

Minneapolis--St. Paul, MN--WI
429,972			0			40

Orlando, FL MSA
419,709			2			12

Austin--San Marcos, TX MSA
403,536			7			27

Tampa--St. Petersburg--Clearwater, FL MSA
328,038			3			39

San Diego, CA MSA
315,817			4			46

Sacramento--Yolo, CA CMSA
315,755			2			35

Raleigh--Durham--Chapel Hill, NC MSA
332,396			12			38

Charlotte--Gastonia--Rock Hill, NC--SC MSA
337,200			8			0

Boston--Worcester--Lawrence, MA--NH--ME--CT CMSA
363,697			2			92

Philadelphia--Wilmington--Atlantic City, PA--NJ--DE--MD CMSA
295,526			4			64

Detroit--Ann Arbor--Flint, MI CMSA
269,257			0			24

West Palm Beach--Boca Raton, FL MSA
267,666			9			44

San Antonio, TX MSA
267,634			6			53

Salt Lake City--Ogden, UT MSA
261,687			4			32


Nashville, TN MSA
246,285			5			26

Indianapolis, IN MSA
226,995			5			34

Greensboro--Winston-Salem--High Point, NC MSA
201,205			4			41

Columbus, OH MSA
194,707			7			23

Kansas City, MO--KS MSA
193,187			1			10


Jacksonville, FL MSA
193,764			3			27


McAllen--Edinburg--Mission, TX MSA
185,918			0			5

Tucson, AZ MSA
176,866			4			40

Fresno, CA MSA
166,936			3			16

Cincinnati--Hamilton, OH--KY--IN CMSA
161,631			5			44

Grand Rapids--Muskegon--Holland, MI MSA
150,623			5			16

Boise City, ID MSA
136,494			9			12

Greenville--Spartanburg--Anderson, SC MSA
131,878			5			26

Richmond--Petersburg, VA MSA
130,872			4			24

Memphis, TN--AR--MS MSA
128,308			3			23

Norfolk--Virginia Beach--Newport News, VA--NC MSA
126,297			8			33

Oklahoma City, OK MSA
124,507			2			22

Albuquerque, NM MSA
123,607			2			29

Colorado Springs, CO MSA
119,915			4			11

Bakersfield, CA MSA
118,168			0			0

St. Louis, MO--IL MSA
111,082			0			0

Fort Myers--Cape Coral, FL MSA
105,775			3			12

Provo--Orem, UT MSA
104,946			5			7

			
Please see:
http://www.yellowpages.com

I hope this information proves more useful to you. If you need further
assistance please feel free to contact me.

Seeker

Very resourceful. Responsive to clarification.

LOL that would be the best $50.00 usa you have ever invested ..It's
not a binary answer .....it's like ohm's law or ....quality, price,
speed...something suffers ...what are you're limits . What type of
practice would you like to practice?

Google hasn't made me a researcher yet, so I can't collect on this,
but here is how I would approach the problem. Fasting growing cities
has got to be the easy part.

The dermatologies per capital more difficult. You can select
NATIONWIDE in the State dropdown on the http://www.yellowpages.com/
search page. this gives you a lot of page to navigate through, but a
quick VB program using the WEb Browser control could save the source
of all these pages to text. They you write a parser to extract the
address info in to a simple database table (not impossible, I've done
things like this before.) The web page designer even made it easy
because you can search for font classes used by CSS:

<font class=listhead>A BETTER DERMATOLOGY CENTER<br></font>
<font class=listing>1012 WESTWOOD RD, WOODMERE, NY 11598<br>

Group by city and get a count. This should be a fairly representative
sample.

I would do it, if I would get PAID.

None of the cities/zip codes you would want to be a dermatologist in.
How far will people drive to get to a dermatologist?  They will
certainly cross zip code boundaries, and in any metro area, cross city
boundaries as well.  If you measure growth as a rate, (rather than net
gain in people), then your analysis will return small, heavily
residential zipcodes/cities, that happen to have one dermatologist
(assuming you through out the several hundred that have no
dermatologists).  It will completely miss the point that immediately
adjacent to that zipcode/city, are a whole bunch of dermatologists
adjacent to other medical offices.



re: maxhodges-ga's method will give you a count of offices (not
dermatologists) that choose to advertise.  The geography associated
with each listing will also be suspect.  When they say Atlanta, are
they in the city of Atlanta, or an inner suburb?

Hi Porter,

I've researched your question for quite sometime and I'm afraid that I
can't provide you with the answer because it's difficult to get the
information for part 1 of your question.

The American Board of Medical Specialties(r) publishes an annual
report on the geographic distribution of doctors based on their
specialty; however, the online version is broken down by state, not
city.
http://www.abms.org/Downloads/Statistics/Table7.PDF
http://www.abms.org/Downloads/Statistics/Table8.PDF

The U.S. Census Bureau tracks occupations by city, but that data will
not be released to the public until May 2002, at the earliest. (In
addition, its data is probably not as specific as you'd like.)

Here's what you can do to find the number of dermatologists per
capita, though:

1) Go to the reference section of your local library and find the
The Official ABMS Directory of Board Certified Medical Specialists.
(Or, if you prefer, you can order a CD-ROM version at
http://www.marquiswhoswho.com/ordering.htm
or by calling 1-888-437-4636)

According to the ABMS, this book "represents the most comprehensive,
convenient, and authoritative source for verification of medical board
certification. Biographies also provide a history of medical
education, training, career, and address information on over 535,000
medical specialists in the U.S. and Canada certified by the
twenty-four Member Boards of the ABMS."

I called the ABMS and a representative said that you would simply have
to first find the specialty, then the area and you can take it from
there.

You may also find data from the following two sources:
The Little Blue Book
http://www.thelittlebluebook.com/home.asp
1-800-345-6865

American Academy of Dermatology
http://www.aad.org 
1-888-462-DERM (1-888-462-3376)

In any case, all of these sources will require that you'll have to do
some massaging of the data to come up with the information you're
seeking.

As for fastest population growth, I think the Census data is the most
reliable, with the caveat being that it's not the *most* recent data.
http://eire.census.gov/popest/archives/place/SC100K-T2.txt
http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t3/tab05.txt
http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/phc-t3.html

According to the U.S. Census website, "...The next subcounty data
release will be out in July 2002 for the reference date July 1, 2001.
Check the archives for the latest subcounty data."

I'm sorry that I couldn't provide you with an answer, but I hope this
will help you get there faster.

By the way, if you're looking for this information because you want to
know where to set up shop and you don't want a lot of competition; you
can cross Palm Beach, Florida off of your list now.

In a Feb. 26 article on TCPalm.com, dermatologist Dr. Thomas Connelly
says,  "We probably have more dermatologists per capita in this state
than anywhere in the country."

Katwoman

You are right; and I will subjectively analyze based on personal
preferences and generate an overall ranking that reflects these
preferences.