A family health emergency early in life pointed Bailey Shaffer toward a medical career path. She’s set to reach a major milestone on Dec. 16 when she graduates with bachelor’s degrees in sociology and biology from The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System.
“I’m hoping to go to med school,” she says. “From there, I want to stay in emergency medicine, but I want to find a way to incorporate people’s backgrounds and the way that society impacts them. What people consume, the people they interact with, the environments they’re in – these are all such major layers of health.”
Shaffer’s health philosophy and her dual degrees reflect the holistic approach to medicine she began to develop in high school in Lawrenceburg, Tenn.
“I took all the medical classes they offered and chemistry. Then I took intro to public health. This is the part I’m actually interested in – the people aspect of health and what impacts their health, like social structures.”
Shaffer began her college career as a sociology and chemistry major in Tennessee. She also took a summer emergency medical technician (EMT) course and earned her license.
“Up to that point, it was all very conceptual. I had these ideas about what I wanted to do and the people I wanted to help.”
Then Shaffer met her now-fiancé, Rob Vitello, who was majoring in information systems / cybersecurity at UAH. She decided to become a Charger, too, and transferred to UAH in spring 2022. Both benefited from the fact that UAH provides in-state tuition rates to new students who reside in these Tennessee counties: Bedford, Coffee, Franklin, Giles, Lawrence, Lincoln, Marion, Marshall and Moore.
“The only reason that I was able to transfer down here at all was because of the in-state tuition,” she says. “The impact that’s had on my educational career has been huge. In my high school, I know that it’s been a driver for a lot of people to look at UAH.”
Shaffer also transferred her EMT license to Alabama and found a job at HEMSI. Her hands-on experiences with patients fueled her academic pursuits, and vice versa.
“My hometown is very small. Everybody I was seeing when I was doing clinicals were people I knew or people who were from the same background as me. Now I’m seeing so many people from different socioeconomic statuses, different backgrounds, different places. I’m seeing in real life the concepts that I’m learning about.”
In the UAH College of Science, classes such as anatomy, physiology and biochemistry gave her scientific insights into the mechanisms of diabetes, heart failure and other diseases.
“I would see that in real life, too. Seeing it from all of the different angles was helpful. I don’t have a huge impact right now on people’s health, other than making sure they make it from point A to point B. But it’s very interesting to understand what is happening in their bodies and what is happening in their outside social structures.”
Shaffer says one of her most valuable UAH classes was sociology of health with Dr. Daniel R. Morrison, chair and associate professor, Department of Sociology.
“The entire class was about the overlap between sociology and medicine. That class cemented what I wanted to do. These are not just ideas or concepts that I’m wishing into existence. These are all real things that people study and people see and people try to impact.
“All the assignments he asked us to do, all of the things he asked us to read, and all of the discussions we had in class were things that I’ve been thinking about. But seeing other people’s points of view on the same issues was huge. It broadened what I was looking at. We would talk about a topic, and then I would see that exact thing in the real world, and it would line up.”
More details about the UAH fall 2024 commencement are available on the UAH commencement website.