Throughout her life, Stephanie Bailey, MD, has been keenly aware that God has provided her with the ‘what’ and left it to her to figure out the ‘how.’
Growing up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Bailey was an honor student with many interests. “I was a ‘jack-of-all-trades,’” said Bailey. “Everyone thought I was going into music. I just knew I was going to college,” she recalled.
“I never really thought about being a physician; I just thought about being impactful,” she continued of her path to becoming a nationally recognized public health expert. “My undergraduate organic chemistry professor pulled me aside one day after class and suggested I think about going to medical school. I literally just said, ‘Oh, okay,’ and that was that.”
Considering the lives Bailey has touched throughout her career, including service as Chief of Public Health Practice for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and as Director of Health for Nashville, many owe Professor Ed Trachtenberg a big ‘thank you’ for recognizing his young student’s potential.
After graduating from Clark University in Worcester, Mass., Bailey wanted a different experience for her next four years so she headed south to Meharry Medical College. Not only did she learn the art and science of medicine while in Nashville, she also met a handsome graduate student named W.T. Bailey, Jr. who was pursuing his master’s degree at nearby Tennessee State University.
“My husband is from Tennessee, and he had never eaten crab,” marveled the Chesapeake Bay native, who remedied that oversight by having a seafood feast for their wedding rehearsal dinner.
After graduation, Bailey matched to her first choice for residency at Grady Memorial/Emory University in Atlanta to complete her training in internal medicine with an emphasis in cardiology. Later, she also earned a Master’s in Health Sciences Administration from the College of St. Francis in Joliet, Ill.
As a young physician in the National Health Services Corps, her attention quickly turned to improving health rather than simply repairing what was broken. “Prevention changes the place where health happens,” she said. “With prevention, health is not relegated to the doctor to fix.”
Bailey finds “the disproportionate allocation of dollars to tertiary care rather than prevention” to be a source of ongoing frustration and has little time or patience for “political posturing, agendas and will.” That’s because to improve outcomes for an individual, community or the entire country is tied up in lifestyle behaviors.
She said her favorite part of her field is facilitating a change in health status. “There is something you have to unlock in individuals, which allows them to let health be their default,” she noted of being part physician, part life coach.
She is also passionate about re-establishing ‘the art of medicine’ in providers at all levels. “Too many times we depend on, and therefore do too many, labs to diagnose an illness,” she said. “The art of medicine is truly listening to people, giving them the space for their story to unfold and the diagnosis to reveal itself. Listen, then use the physical and the labs to confirm.”
That ability to be truly present in the moment, listening, and then discerning the next path to take has served her well over the years and led to her current role helping prepare the next generation of health leaders. She is adamant about affirming best practices and encouraging collaborative thought to address population health issues.
Throughout her career, Bailey has been supported and sustained by her faith and family. She and her husband live on a farm in west Nashville and are parents to three grown children … and even better, grandparents to three little ones. “My grandchildren are nothing but joy. I want more of these!” Bailey exclaimed. When she isn’t playing with her granddaughters, Bailey enjoys reading; following sports; and, on rare occasions, by permission, doing nothing.
While she could easily rest on past accomplishments, it simply isn’t in her DNA. “At age 65, I still look forward. Reflection has always helped me be better in the next cycle … whether that’s the next moment or the next 10 years,” she concluded.