April 22, 2026
First TMA President From Waco in More Than 50 Years
The Texas Medical Association swore in Coryell Health otolaryngologist Dr. Bradford Holland as the organization’s 161st president at TexMed 2026 in Corpus Christi on April 18th after serving as the organization’s president-elect for the past year. Dr. Holland is the first TMA president from Waco in more than five decades.
“Access is the number one issue,” Dr. Holland said. “It takes too long to see a physician as it is now, no matter where you are. The whole system seems to be becoming more technologically advanced and yet harder to access for folks, and that’s frustrating for many, many people. We know we need to train more physicians, and Texas has doubled its number of medical schools since I graduated in 1997, but that still hasn’t kept pace with growth. We need to continue increasing medical school and residency positions, and that requires working through the political process.”
Dr. Holland encourages fellow physicians to engage in organized medicine and advocacy, emphasizing that elected officials who depend on physician input create the policies that shape health care.
“If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re on the menu,” Dr. Holland said. “Medical school trains physicians to focus on their patients, not politics, and that’s very important. But the laws that govern how we care for patients are made in Austin and in Washington. If physicians aren’t in that conversation, you end up with politicians making health policy decisions. The more we’re present, the more they trust us. And the more they trust us, the better it is for patients.”
Dr. Holland holds a decades-long record of TMA leadership, including service on the Council on Legislation, four terms as speaker of the house and chairmanship of TEXPAC, TMA’s political action committee. He also previously served as the president of both the McLennan County Medical Society and the Texas Association of Otolaryngology.
He and his wife, Amanda Holland, director of academic advising and enrollment initiatives for Baylor University’s Robbins College of Health and Human Sciences, live in Waco and have four children.
The Texas Medical Association is the largest state medical society in the nation, representing more than 59,000 physician and medical student members. Since its founding in 1853, TMA’s goal has been to improve the health of all Texans.