The Du Quoin Community Health Center has welcomed a new family medicine trained physician, who will see patients ranging from pediatrics to geriatrics.
Dr. Charelle Smith was a middle and high school science teacher before she went to medical school.
"One of the things I love about being a physician is I still get to teach," she said recently, "being able to explain things in a way that people understand, so they can better manage their own health."
Originally from Maryland, where she also did her undergraduate work, Smith came to Southern Illinois University for the family medicine residency program.
She said what brought her to SIU was a desire to give comprehensive health care to an underserved population.
Moreover, that's why she has stayed in southern Illinois to work. At present she lives in Carbondale. At the Du Quoin REA Clinic she works alongside another physician and three physician assistants.
"I want to be able to service the community," she says.
Smith originally gravitated toward obstetrics.
She said she didn't realize in the beginning that family medicine was her calling. But as she did her rotations, she realized she liked both the moms and the dads. One day she had no less than five generations of women in the room with her, and found it fascinating.
"One of my passions is women's health," Smith says. Women are frequently more comfortable sharing with another woman.
"The more comfortable you are, the more you share," she says. "And the more you share the more we are able to help."
Smith grew up in an Air Force family, the oldest of six children -- she has four brothers and a little sister.
The importance of access to health care was drilled into her at an early age, when her mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. It is critical that people be able to get annual checkups or are followed up in the years following a diagnosis, she said.
"Being the oldest you fall into this place where you care for people -- you help them mature and help them develop," Smith said.
She said she took many roads on her journey to full adulthood -- often taking the roads less traveled.
"I learned a lot along the way," she adds. As a teacher she worked in both public and parochial schools and "did a lot of outreach," including frequently unpopular topics like HIV, sex education and AIDS.
Today, Smith sees herself as someone whose job is not to persuade, but to give full information so patients can make their own informed choices.
"My job as a physician is to explain the facts of medicine -- the risks and benefits, and allow them to make their own best decision," Smith says.
• Dr. Charelle Smith is taking new patients at the Du Quoin Community Health Center, 1564 S. Washington St., in Du Quoin. Call them at (618) 542-8702.
