30 Jul 2024 Garber goes Green

On Aug. 1, Reagan Garber, DO, will begin seeing patients at Conway Regional Greenbrier Family Medicine. Garber has a strong personal connection to Greenbrier and has returned to “give back to the community that raised me,” she said.

She became interested in science, physics and biology at Greenbrier High School and decided to become a physician while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering at the University of Arkansas.

On June 17, Garber completed a three-year residency in Family Medicine at Conway Regional Health System. She was the program’s chief resident from 2023 to 2024, seeing patients at Conway Medical Group.

“Throughout my residency, my plan was always to go back to Greenbrier, where I grew up, to serve and give back to the community that raised me,” she said. “I had a lot of people who invested in me as a teenager, and I think it’s a priority to give back and be a role model for the younger generation.”

One of those mentors, Kristy Roberts, DO, could not be happier about Garber’s return to Greenbrier as a physician at Greenbrier Family Medicine, where Roberts also sees patients. “I met her in the nursery at the hospital. Our families have been entwined for a long time,” she said.

Garber turned to Roberts while learning about becoming a community-minded physician. She looked up to Roberts as a woman who could balance the weighty responsibilities of being a mother and physician. “She spent a lot of time with me as a high school and college student, answering all my questions about the process and what it was like to be a physician,” she said.

“I try to find something personal about each patient,” said Garber. “If they know that you care about them as a person, they are more likely to listen to what you have to say.”

Practicing medicine in your hometown “is an awesome responsibility, and it is also humbling,” Roberts said. “The people you are getting to serve are also those people who loved you and made you who you are. I have had the opportunity to experience that myself, and I am so excited that Reagan will have the same opportunity.