Much as she loved her home in the Appalachians, Stephanie Yarnell-Mac Grory had to leave. Her dreams and ambitions were bigger than the tallest mountains.

by David Finnerty

Last spring, Stephanie Yarnell-Mac Grory was recognized as one of UF’s “40 Under 40” alumni to watch.

There are pockets in the Appalachian Mountains — bitty dot-on-a-map communities in foothills and valleys — that haven’t changed much in a hundred years. Church services still fill pews. Neighbors are for life. Paychecks are earned with muscle and sweat. Children stay put, grow old, and eventually end up with headstones next to their great grandparents.

Home, for Dr. Stephanie Yarnell-Mac Grory, was a place like that. Rural north Georgia. Heart of the Blue Ridge. Domain of the Cherokee National Forest, Chattahoochee River, Blood Mountain, Brasstown Bald, Neels Gap.

“It was a quiet, beautiful place with an abundance of wildlife and hiking,” Yarnell-Mac Grory says of her one-stoplight hamlet.

But it wasn’t for her. Her dreams were too big.

In her little town, restless schoolboys longed to join their fathers and brothers in the marble quarries or on factory assembly lines. Girls looked forward to moving from their parents’ houses into homes of their own the next street over.

“My aspirations were quite different than most of my classmates,” Yarnell-Mac Grory (Ph.D. ’11, MD ’13) says. “I wanted more from life than what I would have if I stayed there. While I wasn’t certain at that time where my path would take me, I knew I needed to go.”

And, oh, how she did.

The University of Georgia was first. Then UF, Yale and Brown, Johns Hopkins and Duke — worlds and galaxies from the Georgia mountains.

“Nothing about this journey was ever easy,” she admits. “At every stage I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and kept going. There were times when I had no one to lean on but myself. I learned to be my own support and when to just put my head down and push through.”

The Doctor Is In

The worst pandemic since World War I baptized Yarnell-Mac Grory. Not that she was new to medicine — she’d been practicing, doing research and teaching for some time prior to COVID-19’s arrival. Until then, however, she hadn’t had to help a hospital and its patients survive such a brutal onslaught.

She was a newish assistant chief of psychiatry and chief of forensic services for Rhode Island’s Department of Behavioral Health, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals when the pandemic started sending people to emergency rooms. To deal with the virus, she leaned on her UF training in immunology and microbiology.

“Responsibility fell to me to write policies and set standards to keep our patients safe,” Yarnell-Mac Grory says. “The forensic hospital is in an old jail. The infrastructure made controlling an outbreak next to impossible if it were to get into the facility.”

So she did what she always does when it comes time to solve a problem: Yarnell-Mac Grory figured it out. Protocols were put in place to quarantine patients and slow infections among employees. Her strategies worked.

After earning her bachelor’s at the University of Georgia, Stephanie Yarnell-Mac Grory moved to Gainesville to earn her doctorate and medical degrees.

“At the time I left, we were the only hospital in Rhode Island without a patient outbreak,” she says.

Even so, there was more to do.

Addicts, patients with mental illnesses, prisoners, the LGBTQA community, the disabled, immigrants, veterans — people too often ignored or neglected — needed a voice during the pandemic, too. That voice turned out to be hers.

“I had to fight more than you could imagine to protect the lives of patients that most the world forgot about,” says Yarnell-Mac Grory, who last spring was named one of UF’s “40 Under 40” alumni to watch.

It was an easy call.

“Medicine is a career of service,” she explains. “Whether it be fighting with the insurance companies on a patient’s behalf or taking on the legislative branch, we are taught that we are the voice for our patients. This is particularly true for the ones who cannot make the case for themselves … You see how vulnerable these populations are and you understand how easily they are taken advantage of and harmed.”

Bulldog to Gator

The University of Georgia, for Yarnell-Mac Grory, was a ticket out of the Appalachian Mountains. The University of Florida was her ticket to all that followed.

It was UF’s Emerging Pathogens Institute that first caught her eye — the notion of becoming an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It seemed to her that EPI, along with the university’s medical school, would be the perfect opportunity to earn a doctorate and a degree in medicine. In time, her interest drifted toward psychiatry. Happiness in her decision to be a Gator, however, never changed.

“UF was a fantastic medical school. I cannot say that enough,” she says. “I have since worked with medical students, residents and fellows from other institutions, so I can say conclusively that UF trains you well. When you leave UF, you are knowledgeable and you are prepared.”

Yale’s School of Public Health, a business of medicine program at Johns Hopkins, Duke’s business school for an MBA, an assistant professorship at Brown University and Yale, Veterans Affairs physician — nothing seemed out of reach for Yarnell-Mac Grory after she left Gainesville.

Being raised in a “solidly blue collar” family taught her to be “tenacious,” Stephanie Yarnell-Mac says.

She hasn’t gone unnoticed. In 2019, the organization 500 Women Scientists recognized Yarnell-Mac Grory for her leadership and advocacy. A few years earlier and not long out of UF’s medical school, the American Psychiatric Association gave her its Junior Investigator Award. She’s also won national and regional awards from the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry and the American Academy for the Advancement of Sciences.

Through it all, she’s stayed true to her north Georgia roots.

“My family was solidly blue collar. Some say this negatively, but this was never a source of embarrassment to me … I’m stronger for it,” she says.

“I wasn’t born into connections or opportunities, but I didn’t let that hold me back. I am proud of my hard work and tenacious spirit. I am thankful that my humble origins gave me perseverance and drive, which are my biggest strengths. I can use all that energy to fight for patients and those without a voice — for taking on injustice in all its forms.”