By Harriet Blake

Dr. Rachael Neal

For Dr. Rachel Neal, women’s health has always been a priority. She was a student liaison with Planned Parenthood during her undergraduate years at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and she traveled to Africa for a research project and also served as President of the Medical Students for Choice group while at UT Southwestern Medical School.

“I have known for a long time that I wanted to involve women’s health in my career, and there’s no better way to do that than to practice in obstetrics and gynecology,” she said. “I love the field and the people in it, and I also love the lasting connections you get to make with your patients.”

Dr. Neal is the recipient of the 2017 Southwestern Gynecologic Assembly Award, which is given annually to an outstanding UT Southwestern graduate who is pursuing a career in the specialty. She said she was surprised and honored by the recognition. “It’s a joy to work with the Ob/Gyn faculty at UT Southwestern, and this recognition only makes me more happy to have gotten to work with them during my Medical School experience,” Dr. Neal said.

While in Medical School, she had many mentors, including Dr. Mary Jane Pearson and Dr. Claudia Werner, both Professors of Obstetrics and Gynecology; Dr. David Nelson, Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology; and Dr. Anne Brancaccio, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine.

“The Southwestern Gynecologic Assembly Award is given to a student who demonstrates scholarship, leadership, and a deep interest in women’s health care,” Dr. Pearson said. “Rachel Neal has done all of that and more during her time here at UT Southwestern. She received rave reviews for her clinical skills, as a future Ob/Gyn resident should.

“She has provided multiple examples of her goals to improve women’s health care and the world around her, whether as a mission worker in Africa, the course director of a preclinical women’s health elective, or a volunteer voter registrar.”

Dr. Neal, a Texas native, was born in Arlington and moved with her family to Tomball, outside of Houston, when she was 10. During high school she played the French horn in the marching and concert bands and studied French. At LSU, she majored in biology with minors in chemistry and French. As an undergraduate, she pursued her passion for community engagement by being involved in nonpartisan political outreaches to increase voter participation of other college students.

During her second year in Medical School, Dr. Neal helped initiate a women’s health preclinical elective.

Between her first and second years at UT Southwestern, she traveled to Lesotho (a small African nation near South Africa) where she participated in an HIV research project. Dr. Neal said her research work took her to Lesotho’s rural areas, which she said have very high HIV rates. Previously, she said, “most of the data has been taken from urban areas, so we worked with a small rural hospital in the mountains, using their data to determine the rate of HIV in the population, i.e., relatively young sexually active women.”

She also was very involved with the ACLU during her third and fourth years at UT Southwestern. As she had done while in college, Dr. Neal and another student helped organize voter registration drives. The group helped get people registered and showed them how and where to vote during the gubernatorial and general elections in 2014 and 2016.

In her free time, Dr. Neal dotes on her three cats. When she’s not working, she also enjoys traveling, especially to Nice and the French Riviera.

She begins her Ob/Gyn residency at the University of Chicago Medical Center in July.

Dr. Pearson is proud of her former student, saying, “I expect great things out of Rachel, not just as a clinician, but also as a leader in women’s health issues.”

Dr. Nelson is a Dedman Family Scholar in Clinical Care.