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For Dr. Kevin Galloway, relationships with his ob/gyn patients ripple out in circles of family, church and community.

“That’s the beauty of this specialty,” he said. “You develop a rapport with one lady, then her sister or cousin is pregnant — before you know it, you’re almost part of the family.”

Practicing in his hometown of Jackson for six years now, Galloway is a partner with brothers Kyle Ball and Chris Ball and spends a majority of his time at their Clinic for Women in south Jackson. The group practices at Central Mississippi Medical Center and recently opened a satellite office in Vicksburg called Special Beginnings.

Galloway’s interest in the ob/gyn specialty started when he was young, looking up to his first cousin Dr. Paul Rice, now retired from the practice. The family connections go back even further.

“Our great-grandmother was a midwife from the turn of the century until the ‘20s and ‘30s,” Galloway said. “She was going around all through Madison County delivering babies back in the horse-and-buggy days.”

Galloway graduated from Jackson Public Schools and Jackson State University, going on to receive a medical degree from Midwestern University’s Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine.

He completed an internship at Tulane University Medical Center in New Orleans and a residency at St. John Medical Center in Detroit before returning home to Mississippi.

“There was a need here,” he said. “But also, the decision was about coming back to that warm Southern place with friendly people that I knew — some place where I thought I could start right in and develop my practice.”

Backing his goals with pride was his late grandmother, who made baby blankets for his patients embroidered with a special monogram. One could spot those blankets swaddling newborns at church or the grocery store, Galloway said.
“It was kind of my own personal touch,” he said. “It was great advertising, too.”

Since starting out in a solo practice, Galloway has moved into a more reasonable schedule with two partners to share call on an every-third-night rotation. His days include a balance of in-clinic visits and surgery at the hospital, in addition to labor-and-delivery duties.

Although he typically delivers more than 20 babies a month, the unique rapport he develops with patients prior to delivery keeps the work from becoming routine.

“You just give the patients as much time as you can,” he said. “I try to do a lot of education with them as well, so they really realize and understand what’s going physiologically with the baby.”

The range of issues he talks about with patients in clinic visits typically goes beyond the female organs.

“You find out that for a lot of women, the main doctor they see during their child-bearing years is the ob/gyn,” he said. “You end up talking about a lot of family issues, as well as getting to meet the husbands and develop relationships with families.”

Among his younger patients, Galloway answers the straightforward questions pitched to him by high school students and college-age women from nearby campuses like Jackson State and Millsaps and Belhaven colleges. He also frequently speaks in local churches about the perils of sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancy.

“I find that really rewarding,” he said. “That’s my way of leaving my footprints in the sands of time — to help somebody when they’re younger to make better decisions in life.”

Galloway also hopes to inspire young people in the minority community to dream of a career in healthcare.

“We have a state with such diverse needs,” he said. “As we create more business opportunities in the state, we can get more of these young people to stay in the state of Mississippi. Especially as we grow in cultural diversity, that’s something that’s really needed.”

Looking ahead, his practice continues to evolve with the arrival of new technology like three-dimensional ultrasound.

“You can pick up a lot more problems pre-natally than you could before, because you can actually see the baby in utero,” he said.

In addition, the use of minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery has been a godsend for his patients in need of hysterectomy or the removal of ovarian tumors and masses.

But those changes in technology will be dwarfed, he expects, by the system-wide changes on the horizon for American healthcare.

“We’re going to have to decide what to do as a nation and as a community, because we’re going to have to take care of people,” he said.

Outside of work, Galloway likes to spend his time reading authors like John Grisham and James Patterson, as well as exercising and spending time with his family. He also travels frequently, to places like Europe and the Caribbean islands. He recently bought a house and is preparing to be married.



May 2008

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