Physician shares reasons to choose Demopolis for new clinic
Dr. Brittney Anderson introduced herself to the Demopolis Rotary Club Wednesday by first telling stories on herself as the middle girl of three growing up on an 80-acre family farm in Autauga County. Her favorite pastime was reading to her pet goat – named Billy, of course.
“I love reading,” she said, and it’s one of the reasons she plans to stress literacy to her patients whom she will be treating in her new medical practice.
Living on a farm instilled in her the idea of practicing rural medicine. All her classmates were applying to Alabama or Auburn, she said, but because of her love of basketball, which she shared with her father, she chose to apply to Duke University. It was the only school she applied to.
“Either I was going to Duke, or I wasn’t going to college,” she decided. Fortunately for her and for Demopolis, she was accepted.
As a rising senior “I had the really great opportunity to travel to Ghana” for the summer, but she immediately contracted malaria. She was treated at a small clinic there and came to realize the difficulties of the poor, rural inhabitants who had travel far distances to get the medical care they needed. It was then she decided she wanted to return to Africa to practice medicine. They were people who looked like her, grew up in a rural community as she did and had to travel far to get health care.
But after Anderson told her father of her plans, he responded, “Look outside, Brittney. There are people here that have to travel for health care.”
The daughter took her father’s advice. After graduation from Duke in psychology pre-med, she earned a master’s degree in Rural and Community Health from UA, her medical degree from UAB School of Medicine and completed her family medicine training at the UA Tuscaloosa Family Medicine Residency Program.
Diabetes and hypertension are rampant in rural Alabama, Dr. Anderson told Rotarians, and she saw a great need to help people with their chronic medical conditions. With the financial strain on rural clinics and hospitals, it is becoming more difficult for folks who live in the country to access the medical care they need.
While her family encouraged her to set up a practice close to home, Dr. Anderson joked, “It’s hard to practice medicine when you’re related to half the people in town.”
For the past 2½ years she has been a physician with University Medical Center located in Whitfield Regional Hospital, and she has formed many close relationships with the people in Demopolis. When she decided to open her own practice to help reduce the shortage of physicians in rural Alabama, she chose to stay here.
“I fell in love with Demopolis,” she said. “Demopolis is very much to me like Prattville was.”
On June 17 Anderson Family Care held a ribbon-cutting ceremony and the next day opened its doors for people to see the new clinic on West Washington Street across from the Public Square.
The open house “was more than I could have imagined,” Dr. Anderson said. Friends and family from all around the area and supporters from Demopolis attended the event.
During the open house many future patients filled out medical forms and set up appointments. She will begin seeing patients July 5.
She readily admits she is embarking on a path that is “not the norm for what’s going on.” Most young physicians, she said, choose to join major medical practices, but she is “a crazy girl that wants to open her own practice.”
Dr. Anderson won’t be limiting her involvement in Demopolis to her practice. Already she is finding ways to support the community. One of the first things she plans to do is give a free book at every well-child visit to children from 6 months to five years of age. It is one way she is helping to foster literacy – a hark back to those times she read to Billy the goat.
Dr. Anderson teaches medical students and family medicine residents, serves on the UAB School of Medicine Admissions Committee, is the secretary/treasurer of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama and is president of the West Alabama Medical Association. In 2020 she was named the UA School of Medicine Distinguished Young Alumni Award.