Dr. Hope Shepherd and Dr. Yuefeng ‘Rose’ Wu: William F. Ross, M.D., Scholarship Award in Family Medicine
For Dr. Hope Shepherd and Dr. Yuefeng “Rose” Wu, practicing medicine is all about relationships and giving back. Both have a passion for community service, and both are named recipients of the 2018 William F. Ross, M.D., Scholarship Award in Family Medicine.
Named in honor of Dr. Ross, who served as Chair of Family and Community Medicine at UT Southwestern from 1984 to 1993, the award includes a $1,000 scholarship from the Dallas Chapter of the Texas Academy of Family Physicians Foundation.
“Hope is really quite brilliant, but very down to earth,” said Dr. Dan Sepdham, Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine. “She’s the kind of physician that I would recommend to any of my personal family members. She may even be taking care of me in the not-too-distant future.”
“Rose is a very thoughtful, gentle person who will take great, wonderful care of her patients,” said Dr. Vivyenne Roche, Professor of Internal Medicine and Director of the Geriatrics Fellowship Program. “She will make a great physician.”
Dr. Hope Shepherd
The middle of three siblings, Dr. Shepherd grew up in Duncanville, Texas, and considers older brother Chad and younger brother Blake her closest friends. “I acquired a love for science from my dad who, although a builder by trade, knows more about plants, animals, and different ecosystems than most scientists I know,” she said. “I gained a deep appreciation for education from my mom and grandmother, who both worked for many years as teachers and then principals.”
With dreams of becoming a missionary doctor, she headed to Baylor University and promptly participated in a medical mission trip to Kenya. “The experience was very humbling and inspired me to continue on in pursuit of learning how to serve people through medicine.”
She majored in ecology, worked as a chemistry teaching assistant, and completed several other mission trips. “I also lived next door to some rowdy boys who would occasionally raid our fridge, play their music too loud, and block our driveway with their football games,” she said. “I married one of these crazy neighbors, Jake, at the end of my senior year. He is an incredible man, and I couldn’t be more thankful for him.”
She enrolled at UT Southwestern with hopes of becoming a family doctor. “I wanted to serve my community and hopefully do medical missions one day, so being able to take care of young and old seemed like the perfect fit. This was confirmed as I went through each rotation and loved the primary care aspect in each field.”
A member of the Family Medicine Interest Group and the Christian Medical and Dental Association, she served at a variety of UTSW-led outreaches and especially enjoyed volunteering at events for patients with HIV.
Dr. Shepherd will soon begin her family medicine residency at Methodist Charlton Medical Center in Dallas. “I was actually born in this hospital and consider it an honor to go back and work in the community where I grew up,” she said. “After residency, I would like to work in a clinic and serve people of all ages. I also dream of doing work in underserved areas – whether here in the states or somewhere overseas as part of my practice.”
Yuefeng “Rose” Wu
Born in Kunming, China, Dr. Wu lived with her grandparents for a few years after her parents immigrated to the U.S. “When my parents were finally ready for me to join them, I had to make 11 trips to the U.S. embassy, but on the 11th time, they finally gave me the treasured visa to be able to join my parents in the states,” she said. “I moved to Irving, Texas, in the middle of first grade, knowing zero English.”
The family relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia, before settling in Southlake, Texas, where Dr. Wu graduated from Carroll Senior High School before heading to UT Austin. She said her long and winding journey puts other challenges into perspective.
“If my parents made it so far from nothing and we crossed so many barriers to get to where I am today, everything else is achievable,” she said.
At UT, she majored in biochemistry, traveled to Nicaragua with the Foundation for International Medical Relief for Children, and conducted basic science research in the Ellington Lab – which led to a published article in the journal Analytical Chemistry in 2015.
Inspired by her love of science classes and fascination with how the human body works, Dr. Wu thought as early as middle school that she wanted to be a physician. In high school, she shadowed a family practitioner and knew she wanted the same kind of trusting doctor-patient relationships he had. Her UT Southwestern experience confirmed her choice. “After going through all my rotations, I realized I enjoyed various aspects of each, and if I combined each part, they all described what family medicine is.”
Among her numerous outside activities, she served as an event coordinator and logistics officer for the DFW Hepatitis B Free Organization, participated in the United to Serve community health fair, and mentored underrepresented high school students.
Dr. Wu and her fiancé, software developer Edward So, whom she met at UT, are looking forward to returning to Austin for her family medicine residency at UT Austin Dell Medical School, where she said she immediately fell in love with the program. “When people say you will ‘find your people’ at a program, they were right,” she said. “I knew these were my people.”
#
Dr. Sepdham holds the Drs. Malone V. Hill and John W. Pate Professorship in Family Medicine.
