Shelby Stoneking
A native of Greensboro, NC, Shelby is thrilled to be attending medical school in her home state. She graduated in 2014 from Washington University in St. Louis, where she majored in Earth and Planetary Sciences and minored in Chinese Language and Culture. After spending several years in the Remote Sensing Lab, she decided to pursue a career that was more people-focused and began to explore the field of medicine. Following graduation, she worked for a year at the Church Health Center, a non-profit clinic providing healthcare to the working uninsured of Memphis, TN, and then spent a year living and working in the educational field in Shenzhen, China. Prior to enrolling in medical school, she worked as a scribe in an emergency room in Lexington, NC, for one year.
In her free time Shelby loves to hike with her dog, Frankie, experiment with cooking and avidly consume podcasts. She is also an active member of the UNC School of Medicine Queer-Straight Alliance and volunteers with Student Health Action Coalition (SHAC), the oldest student-run free clinic in the country. A participant in the Humanities and Social Sciences Scholarly Concentration, she plans to do focused work in the field of healthcare for sexual minorities as a part of her medical education. Shelby said she is extremely humbled and excited to have been selected for the ASTMH Benjamin H. Kean Fellowship.
Project: "Digital Directory: Using Mobile Applications to Increase Syphilis Testing Rates among Chinese MSM"
6/04/2018 - 7/27/2018
China
What does the Kean Fellowship mean to you?
With a passion for addressing sexual health disparities, one of my short-term goals is to become better educated in this multi-faceted discipline, an area underrepresented in medical school curricula. In the long-term, as a future MD it is my goal to help meet the needs of communities by engaging them in healthcare solutions as well as identification and removal of barriers. Thus, by supporting me in my endeavors to create opportunities for affected communities to be part of a problem-solving team, the ASTMH Kean Fellowship is allowing me to reach these goals, and I believe my professional development will benefit significantly as a result.
What do you anticipate learning?
1) Grow in my understanding of the healthcare barriers specific for MSM in China and how such issues are being addressed by community-based organizations.
2) Learn about qualitative research techniques and apply such techniques to conduct thematic analysis.
3) Apply and improve my mandarin Chinese skills, specifically in the context of healthcare.
As I aspire to work with diverse populations in a community health setting, I’m confident that in conducting research with the Social Entrepreneurship to Spur Health (SPUR) team, I will receive the interdisciplinary training and sociocultural awareness that will prepare me to serve these communities. Furthermore, with the support from the Kean Fellowship I will be able to take advantage of this opportunity to learn about the traditions, practices and culture of Chinese medicine, lessons that could be incorporated into my own practice.
What interests you about tropical medicine and what problems are you interested in solving?
I am drawn to tropical medicine because of the branches of medicine that I have encountered in my first year of medical school. Nothing has quite held my attention like infectious disease, a field of medicine highly relevant to the tropics. Infectious disease is particularly appealing to me because it not only entails manipulating human biology, it requires concerted public health efforts to be effective. Furthermore, when these diseases are endemic to a specific region or are particularly difficult to control, it requires solutions that originate outside of traditional medical practices and thought. These factors coupled with my experience and interest in the tropical regions of Southern China, a place I have come to know and love, make tropical medicine very attractive to me. Beyond my captivation with the region and subject matter, the most important aspect of this global health experience will be working with an underserved population to address healthcare disparities relevant to them. This is main reason I am interested in tropical medicine, a discipline that focuses on working in low-resource communities to address healthcare needs specific to those areas.