By Jennifer Jett Prezkop
Dr. Sherri Young remembers a lot of things about the night of January 12, 2018. It was unusually warm and raining. She woke up to the smell of propane in her family’s home. There was an eerie pink and white vapor cloud in the driveway. She, her husband and her daughter barely made it to safety before the house exploded. People—some they knew, some they didn’t—responded to the disaster to help. She walked away with her family, the clothes on her back and a renewed sense of purpose: to designate 2019-2020 as a year of giving and paying forward the kindness from strangers she and her family received in their darkest moment. As a physician, health officer and executive director of the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department (KCHD) and president of the West Virginia State Medical Association (WVSMA), her career path has placed her in the perfect position to fulfill this personal mission.
An Introduction to Medicine
Helping others is by no means a foreign concept to Young. Growing up in the small, rural coal town of Corrinne, WV, she saw people in need and considered careers in which she could help them. What turned her onto medicine, though, was her grandfather.
“He was a quadriplegic as a result of a tumor on his spine,” she says. “He was given six months to live but lived 24 years. The only way that was possible was through the hard work of my family—my grandmother, my mom and dad, my dad’s sisters and I all took care of him.”
What she learned through this introduction to medicine was how taking proper care of a patient can improve longevity and quality of life.
She also learned about sacrifice. Her father put off his own medical career in order to help care for his father. He went back to school at age 41 to become a physician, enrolling in West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine (WVSOM). Young was in junior high when he resumed his studies, and she had a unique opportunity to spend time on campus, which made a lasting impression on her.
“I got to meet the professors and explore the school grounds,” she remembers. “It was such a warm, loving and nurturing environment that I couldn’t wait to go back.”
A Path of Firsts
Young enrolled as a student at WVSOM in 1999 and earned her degree in 2003 before moving to Charleston for a residency in family medicine at Charleston Area Medical Center. She and her husband, whom she met at WVSOM and who is also a doctor, practiced at the Holzer Clinic in South Charleston for eight years before Young took a leap of faith and moved into the education side of health care. In 2013 she was named the first medical director of University of Charleston’s physician assistant program, and in 2015, she was chosen as the state’s first immunization officer. In 2019, she became the first female and first osteopathic doctor to serve as the full-time health officer and executive director of the KCHD.
While Young sees this position with the health department as an opportunity to help ensure the safety and well-being of the 180,000 individuals who live in Kanawha County, she also views it as the chance to get young people interested in public health. As a result, she is leading the health department in creating a teen health board with the hope of reaching local youth and encouraging them to explore the many exciting careers available in health care.
“The teen health board’s mission is two-fold,” she says. “It will allow us to mentor teens ages 15-18 and introduce them to health care careers, and it will also enable them to act as peer leaders in their schools, which will help me get the message out to other students about health concerns like vaping, safety and eating right. I want them to be excited about public health while also giving them a boost for their college careers.”
A Role in Mentorship
In August 2019, Young was also named president of the WVSMA, a patient centered advocacy organization of physicians focused on improving health care in the Mountain State. In this role, she will utilize her wealth of experience in the health care industry to help physicians with their practices, promote patient advocacy and act as a mentor. In the association’s history of 153 presidents, she is only the fourth female. While she sees this as an opportunity to inspire all health care professionals, she is especially interested in having an impact on other women.
“Women need the strong support of other women,” she says. “It is difficult trying to balance a family with a career, and I want to show other women that if I can do it, they can do it too.”
A Focus on Progress
During her one-year term as president of the WVSMA, Young hopes to leave her mark by having a lasting positive impact on the health of West Virginians.
“This year, we will work toward making it easier for patients to get the care they need and teaching them how to navigate insurance while helping doctors have successful practices in rural communities where there is a shortage of physicians and nurses,” she says. “We want to make the whole process of health care easier for everyone.”
She also has lofty goals for the KCHD, which are inspired by the health challenges facing the Mountain State as a whole. Today, the greatest health risk facing West Virginians remains addiction, which impacts all residents, strains the health care and foster care systems and leads to first responder fatigue. She believes, though, that the tide is turning.
“Last year in West Virginia, we saw overdose deaths come down slightly, which is a step in the right direction,” she says. “That is because we have things like naloxone distribution, which is a key in reducing overdoses and getting people into recovery. Lowering the overdose rate is a slow process, but the problem wasn’t created in a couple of months or even a couple of years. We have to be patient in trying to get the numbers back to where they need to be.”
Along with the challenge of lowering the overdose rate is that of addressing addiction itself and the stigma that accompanies it. According to Young, the labels addicts obtain due to their illness can impede their efforts to recover.
“Addiction breaks relationships and makes it impossible to work, so there are many consequences the addicts are dealing with,” she says. “While we get people into recovery, we also have to help them repair their lives from those consequences—help them reconnect with their families and find employment.”
With the spike in HIV cases among IV drug users, the health department is also working on a plan to slow the spread of the disease.
“We are testing people faster for HIV by bringing them into care, and we are making sure they are staying in care and getting the follow-ups they need, which is essential for HIV patients,” she says. “Our HIV Task Force is a big piece of the effort, but we are also focusing on prevention and getting people into recovery. These are things that are bigger than what the health department can do alone. We need everyone at the table to help.”
Another major area of concern is the vaping epidemic that is causing serious health issues and even death among users all over the country.
“Vaping is a big issue,” she says. “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we now have more than 2,000 vaping-related illnesses, and we have seen eight of those in West Virginia. These are cases of young, healthy, vibrant people becoming extremely ill, and we have seen 42 deaths from it. That makes it a public health crisis.”
Solutions like public vaping ordinances have been discussed, but Young believes something has to be done about the easily accessible vaping products that attract children. She is hopeful the newly developed teen health board will assist in educating young people about the dangers.
“Teens are very susceptible,” she says. “The young brain is so much more likely to hold onto that nicotine and create an addiction that could last a lifetime. We have parents and grandparents now who are saying their kids can’t quit vaping, which means we now need to look at cessation options.”
A Calling to Serve
The house explosion showed Young just how short life is, and she feels fortunate to still be here, living in the Mountain State, working for its people and contributing to positive change. Determined to use what she feels is a second chance at life to have a lasting impact on others in need, she designated August 2019-August 2020 as the year of giving back.
“I don’t know how long I have on this earth, so I want to take every opportunity to pay it forward,” she says. “I’ve challenged all of the doctors at the state medical association to find ways—even the smallest ways—in which they can give back this year. It can be an email to an old friend or listening to a coworker’s problem or looking at what their communities need.”
One of the first efforts Young led during the year of giving back was a bicycle helmet drive at the Kanawha Medical Society (KMS) to benefit the City of Charleston, which provides them to local children. For its December meeting, the WVSMA rallied around a family who had recently lost everything in a house fire by hosting a fundraiser. She hopes to have a new project lined up for the KMS spring meeting so she and the members can volunteer together again, whether that is a street cleanup or another opportunity to help a family in need.
Two years later, the disaster continues to inspire her to find ways to help keep others safe. Under her leadership, in July 2019 the KCHD developed the Kanawha Health Report, a podcast to educate county citizens about important topics, and in October, the health department marked Fire Prevention Month by hosting a fire prevention and safety event. She has also worked with the American Red Cross to distribute educational brochures, and she hopes to contribute to propane safety awareness in the near future.
More than that, she wants to show her daughter the power of helping others.
“Giving back has given me a different kind of joy,” she says. “Once you place the needs of others in front of yourself and see the wonderful impact you are having, it creates a sense of warmth and happiness that you want to feed and grow. It’s not something you can buy, and it cannot be given to you. At the end of the day, I feel like the world is a little better because of it, and I want to pass that on to my daughter and her generation.”
