Haley Gates has worked with physicians in Brazil several times and recently returned from a medical trip to the Dominican Republic, but her sights are now set on home.

Gates, a 24-year-old second-year medical student at the UAB School of Medicine, is passionate about becoming a primary care physician. For her, pursuing a career in medicine means returning to her hometown of Aliceville, Ala. to care for the community where she grew up.

“I’m one of those people who has always known what I wanted to do with my life,” Gates said, “Since age 10 I’ve known that I wanted to be a doctor.”

After graduating from Judson College with a double major in biology and chemistry,

Gates received a master’s degree in public health from UAB in 2014. She decided to begin her medical career that fall.

Now, she’s fostering her well-rounded knowledge of public health by getting actively involved with the Family Medicine Interest Group on campus, serving as student coordinator.

Family medicine has always been an interest to Gates, so she decided to shadow a doctor in her hometown of Aliceville this summer.

“I know what it’s like to live here, but I wanted to know what it would look like to be a physician here,” said Gates.

She is shadowing James Parker, M.D. through the UAB Department of Family and Community Medicine’s Pathway Program, a four-week summer shadowing program that exposes pre-clinical students to a rural ambulatory setting.

“I know about half of the patients that come into the office, just from growing up in Aliceville,” said Gates.

Gates said she didn’t expect to see such a variety of illnesses during her time shadowing, but that has been one of her favorite parts of the experience.

“You go to class, read about health problems in books and think about how that type of stuff doesn’t seem to happen too often,” said Gates, “When you think about family practice you think common colds and stomach bugs, but there’s a huge variety of things I’ve seen from my textbooks on a day-to-day basis.”

On a recent trip to Juan Dolio, Dominican Republic, Gates had some experience with the more personal side of medicine. The two-week trip was led by the Christian Medical Ministries of Alabama and joined by B. Earl Salser Jr., M.D., associate professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Patients picking up prescriptions were given the option of visiting the evangelism station where Gates worked.

“We’d get to pray and talk about their health problems but also about problems going on at home and just anything else in their lives.”

Gates likes family medicine because of this personal patient care aspect.

“In medicine, there are often seemingly hopeless situations. We got to give people some hope for the things they were dealing with.”