Dr. Huda Sharaf: Student care her specialty

When Dr. Huda Sharaf -- medical director at University of Arkansas' Pat Walker Health Clinic, where she's worked for over 12 years -- was asked to serve on Fayetteville's newly revived Board of Health, she eagerly complied. The board had been disbanded two years ago because there wasn't much for members to do. But with a global pandemic requiring vital health-related decisions to be made citywide, city council member Matthew Petty says it was the right time to bring it back to life.

"The city has the ability to fund and execute public health strategies, but we need expert advice to make strategic decisions," says Petty. "The new Board of Health will help us do that."

Sharaf, says Petty, was a natural fit for the board. After all, her position as medical director means she's a veritable storehouse of knowledge and best practices when it comes to tactics for keeping the spread of infectious diseases to a minimum. In fact, as recently as this past fall, her team helped to quash a mumps outbreak on campus.

"With the university being so important to our city, we knew we needed someone like Dr. Sharaf on the commission," says Petty. "As the director of the on-campus health center, she is in a position to provide timely and expert advice about how we can best support public health on campus. Dr. Sharaf has been an active member of the board. She has provided essential context with respect to testing and tracing efforts on campus. Most importantly, she is making certain the board considers the dynamic between the university and the city and how it will impact the current outbreak when students return to campus."

"She's always going to lead with integrity," says Sharaf's twin sister, Dr. Mai Sharaf. "She's going to lead with what's right, in her honest opinion. Any board that puts her in that position is lucky to have her. A lot of people want to hide behind this political view or this slant, but whatever my sister is going to say, she's going to be a straight shooter based in honesty and integrity."

For the community-minded Sharaf, it was an easy decision.

"I want to be part of the discussion and appreciate being invited to the table," she says, speaking by phone from her office at the Pat Walker Health Clinic. She's upbeat and forthright -- her enthusiasm and bracing cadence could easily lead her to a second career as a motivational speaker if her hands weren't so full with the career she already has. "I want to do whatever is possible to maintain the safety of our area, not only for the campus, but for our community and our families. I want to ensure that the decisions being made are based on science and evidence-based medicine."

Like any good teacher -- which she's been at many stages through her career -- Sharaf checks in often to make sure her point is being understood. The downright patriotic answer to why she said yes to joining the Board of Health points to a heart that beats faster for civic duty -- not surprising, given that the story of how Sharaf's family came to be in the United States is as close to the perfect representation of "the American dream" as you could possibly get.

Egypt and America

Sharaf's parents were born in Egypt. Both became veterinarians, but they were struggling.

"[My father's] parents had died when he was a young adult, and he was the oldest sibling -- he was left to take care of his younger siblings," she explains. "He was working three jobs around the clock in Cairo. Once my father met the obligations to his family, he said, 'There has to be a better way of life somewhere else.' At the time, everybody thought he was crazy to move to the U.S., because he didn't know anyone there. He literally left Cairo with a suitcase, his veterinary degree and $200 in his pocket. His brave decision in 1968 led to us having opportunities and a life in the United States that we would have otherwise not had."

Though Sharaf's father moved to the United States to study in a master's program, his specialized skills led to him soon being recruited by the United States Department of Agriculture. Offered a choice of stations between Iowa and Arkansas, he chose Arkansas after someone described to him an Iowa winter. When Sharaf's mother joined him, she too was recruited by the USDA. The family settled in Batesville -- a majority white town with a population of under 10,000 in the 1970s -- where her mother was stationed.

"It was a little challenging at times," admits Sharaf. "But the friendships we made there were long lasting and very supportive. But here you have an Egyptian Muslim family living in Batesville, and you're in a classroom where you're so different -- and you don't want to be different when you're going through elementary school, junior high and high school. I vividly remember sitting in a classroom in fourth grade, in a history class. I don't know what the conversation was about, but I remember there was a girl in my class, and in the middle of the class, she announced, 'Huda doesn't believe in God.' I looked at her and said, 'That's not true! I believe in the same God that you believe in!' The teacher did nothing to help me. I remember going home and talking to my mom and dad about it. They were and continue to always be there for us. "

Overall, though, Sharaf says there were more efforts made to understand and accept the family's belief system than there were to deride it.

"My mom and dad were frequently invited to our community's local churches to discuss our faith," she says. "What we learned about our faith, we learned from our parents. My mom and dad always led their lives by the Golden Rule: Treat others the way you wish to be treated. My father would say, 'We're not here to convert anybody. We respect people's beliefs, and hopefully they will respect ours.'"

Sharaf and her sister, Mai, showed the same predilection for and talent in the sciences that their parents did. Sharaf says most people assume she and her sister are identical twins even though they are fraternal, and, on the phone, their voices are almost indistinguishable. Both decided at a young age that they wanted to pursue careers in medicine.

"My father, very early on, gave us a strong sense of independence," she notes. "It was just me and my sister, and my parents would always say, 'Never depend on anyone but yourself.' They were very strong advocates for our education. Whatever career path we took, they would be there to support us, to help make us successful."

Love and marriage

Both sisters attended the University of Arkansas, where Sharaf met her husband Robb Jones, who today operates Jones Mobile Veterinary Service. Jones was a chemical engineering major, and the two met in physical chemistry class.

"We always talk about how it was 'nerd love'," Sharaf says with a laugh.

The two were friends for a while, chatting together in class, and when Sharaf told Jones her parents were looking to buy a house in North Little Rock, he took a particular interest -- it was his home town. When Sharaf's parents found their new home, they excitedly told their daughters that their new neighbor had a student at the university and wondered if their daughters knew him.

"My sister and I were like, 'Oh, sure, there are only 15,000 students here,'" says Sharaf.

But when she told Jones about the area they were buying in, he started describing the very house her parents were purchasing.

"He said, 'Your parents share a fence line with my parents,'" says Sharaf. "It was great, because we would travel home together for our college breaks. I was the first person in my family to marry someone who was not from the Middle East. It helped a great deal that my parents already knew his parents since they were neighbors. My husband and I joke that we paved the way for my sister and my cousins."

Sharaf and her sister were both accepted to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, which they completed in 1997, and were thrilled to both match at Washington University in St. Louis for their residencies. It's hard to imagine a closer sibling pair.

"What a blessing, to have a twin that is your best friend, that you love, respect and idolize," Sharaf says. "You can be that strength and support for each other. And that continues to be the case."

"My sister and I complete each other -- we always have," says Mai. "When we were growing up, we were always asked if we were competitive. But if there was ever anything we could do to help each other, we would do that -- in our academic and personal lives, we were each others' rocks. We've seen each other at our worst and best times, and the love was always unconditional. I can't say enough about my sister. She has a will and a strength and an integrity you won't see in anyone else."

Meanwhile, Jones -- now Sharaf's husband after their summer wedding following her UAMS graduation -- was off to Louisiana to study veterinary medicine at Louisiana State University. Though Sharaf says a "long distance marriage" was, at times, challenging, both were working and studying at levels that would have allowed them little time to spend together anyway. When Sharaf completed her residency, the couple reunited in Florida, where Sharaf accepted a position as a clinical assistant professor at the University of Florida while Jones completed a surgical internship in the School of Veterinary Medicine there. Her position in Florida was grueling, she says, with her job duties split between outpatient clinic work and a call rotation with the hospitalists at the community hospital. But she got to teach, something she calls a highlight of the job.

Once Jones' internship ended, he and Sharaf moved back to St. Louis. Sharaf continued teaching as the clinical instructor at Washington University School of Medicine, where she staffed emergency room patient cases with advanced practice nurses, physician assistants and residents. Emergency room medicine was fascinating to her, but two things prompted a change in positions at Washington University: First, the couple had decided to start a family (they now have two kids -- Brady, who is 17 and Mai, 13), and emergency room medicine was not an easy position for a mother of young children. Second, Sharaf says she had realized she was missing something in her ER work.

"It was shift work," she explains. "When you were home, you were done, you didn't continue to be on call. Internal medicine is all about continuity of care and developing relationships with your patients over the years; I had a tough time letting go of my patients at the end of a shift. I would leave my ER shift at two o'clock in the morning, but would stay up calling the ER to make sure my patients were doing well.

"My colleagues would say, 'What are you doing? We've got this, Huda,' and I would respond with, 'I just want to make sure -- what were the lab results? What did their imaging look like? Are they going to a unit? Are they going to the floor? Are they doing better?' And my ER co-workers put up with me. They used to also tease me about my long ER notes -- internists are known to write really long notes. My co-workers would say, 'We just got finished reading your novel. We're pretty prepared to take care of the patient now.' All in good fun, obviously, but I was just not cut out to let go of my ER patients. I knew ER work wasn't going to be a long-term career for me."

But her next career move felt like home: She took the position as staff physician at Washington University's health center, where she worked for four years before moving to the University of Arkansas. Sharaf says she fell in love with university health care almost immediately.

College and covid-19

"I've done a little bit of everything in my medical career thus far -- ER work, private outpatient practice, hospitalist work -- but I can tell you, hands down, I have evaluated and treated more varied illnesses as a college health physician," she says. "Several friends from medical school and residency have questioned my career path, making statements like 'College health? What do you see besides STDs and mono?' I usually reply with, 'You can't even imagine how much more I evaluate and treat.' I take care of a varied age group and see people from all over the world. I enjoy caring for the university students, faculty and staff, appreciate the diversity of our campus and am privileged to work with an outstanding group of physicians, nurse practitioners and support staff at the Pat Walker Health Center.

"I truly believe that college health should be considered a separate specialty in medicine. Not only do we evaluate, diagnose and treat, we also educate. The bulk of our patients are between the ages of 18-25 and, often times, they are sitting in a doctor's office alone for the first time. We have a responsibility to listen, offer education on healthier lifestyle choices, ensure they are partnering in the medical decision making and also assist them in navigating the healthcare system."

"College health is a subset of medicine often overlooked," says A.J. Olsen, Pat Walker Health Center's director of medical services. "It is a great opportunity to be able to impact the current and future growth of our students. That said, our facility cares for not only students, but also faculty and staff. No matter the age group we work with, communication and compassion are key. The younger age group are learning their way, and our main goal is to provide them education and guidance to make informed decisions. Dr. Sharaf has the ability to be firm, compassionate and guided in every interaction. Her patients love and respect her greatly even when it may be difficult to hear what she has to say. Often, it is those difficult medical conversations that are cumbersome to navigate, and Dr. Sharaf takes those head on with eloquence."

The presence of international students, she says, means that the health clinic has to be practiced in the treatment of any infectious diseases showing a resurgence around the globe -- Ebola, Zika or Dengue Fever, for example. The mumps outbreak on campus last fall left the university appropriately prepared to handle the current global pandemic -- a committee made up of representatives from within the university system was already in place and accustomed to making recommendations to keep the campus as safe as possible in the face of an infectious disease outbreak.

"The issue is not whether we're going to have an outbreak on campus -- we are going to have covid-19 infection on campus," Sharaf says. "You can't bring that many people on site and not expect that. The issue is trying to mitigate the risks on our campus as much as possible. We know that covid-19 transmission decreases when everyone wears a mask and people physically distance. Mask wearing as a social norm, as you know, continues to be an uphill battle. Wearing a mask is not a political statement. It does not indicate strength or weakness in a person. Wearing a mask is an indication that you care about the people around you."

As a proponent of mask wearing, Sharaf applauds both the chancellor's decision to make masks mandatory on campus and, later, Gov. Asa Hutchinson's statewide mask mandate.

"As our chancellor stated, 'I protect you, you protect me, we protect each other,'" she says, and adds that Gov. Hutchinson's decision will "have more people -- hopefully the majority of people -- in our state wearing masks and slowing down the covid-19 transmission trajectory in our local area and state. But we also need to keep in mind that physical distancing of six-plus feet and hand hygiene also go with mask wearing in the prevention/slowing down of covid-19 spread."

Sharaf is on two of the most influential Northwest Arkansas health committees, responsible for making life-or-death recommendations and is medical director for a health center that serves more than 27,000 students and nearly 4,500 faculty and staff. But she's also a mom: This is on Sharaf's mind as the interview nears its end. When asked if there's anything else she wants to talk about, she raises the issue of women in STEM careers. She recounts a story about a school nurse telling her she couldn't be a doctor if she also wanted a family. "You can't have both," the nurse had said firmly. It made an impression -- lighting a fire to Sharaf's 7 year-old engine, it seems.

"I'm doing this because my mom was my role model," she says. Once again, it's easy to picture her on an auditorium stage, firing up an audience of motivated young girls. "My mom was a full-time veterinarian, and she took care of us. I want to be that example for my daughter, that she can have her career, and she can also have her family. It's constant work, but it's worth it. We need to have more women in STEM careers. I want women to know that they belong in these positions.

"I want to be an example not only for my daughter, but for women who are considering STEM disciplines. Whatever their drive, they can do it."