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t m c » p u l s e | a p r i l 2 0 1 7 17 Med School at 40 Shasta Theodore, Ph.D., brings decades of experience to her role as a medical student B y A l e x a n d r a B e c k e r S hasta Theodore is the oldest student at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth. Theodore has already completed a Ph.D. and worked on public health initiatives in Africa. So why medical school, now? The second-year medical student, now 42, spoke with Pulse about her nontraditional career path, fasting for answers, and how she hopes to expand access to health care for underserved populations. Q | You earned a bachelor's degree in sociology and history at the University of Houston and went on to complete a Ph.D. in demography at the University of Pennsylvania. What made you decide to go to medical school? A | The summer after my first year of graduate school is when I decided I wanted to do health care, but I was thinking nursing. I was sick of school at that point, and I didn't want to spend the summer working for my professor, so he sent me to Ghana. They had a health project there where nurses were working to figure out how to give rural residents more access to care, so I spent my time traveling with those nurses. They would go and visit families and basically take health care to the families instead of asking people to come to clinics and hospitals. That was revolutionary for me, to make health care accessible in that way. And I just decided, this is what I want to do with my life. I wanted to be relevant like that, and the people appreciated it so much. I had just never seen that kind of gratitude where they would give the nurses chickens and eggs as a way to say thank you, and these are people who are already just barely feeding their own families. The nurses would explain to me that even a small cut on the foot or on the hand, or a headache that goes without treatment, could be life-threatening issues for people in these areas. I just said, you know, I want what I do to matter that much. When I returned to Penn, I thought I would con- tinue my Ph.D. but also combine that with nursing, but my professor was not impressed by that plan. I think he was afraid that I would go more in the nurs- ing direction and ultimately just drop the Ph.D., and he might have been right. He strongly encouraged me to just focus on the Ph.D., and by the time I was done with it, I was really tired of school. It had been a long journey. (continued) Health care is just basic. Not having it inhibits us in ways I never imagined before I started traveling. — SHASTA THEODORE, PH.D. Student at McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Theodore outside her apartment.