GRACE COTTAGE FAMILY HEALTH EXPANDS AGAIN

Dr. Alexandra Barstow has joined Grace Cottage Family Health, bringing the total number of family practice physicians on the Grace Cottage staff to six (Kimona Alin, Robert Backus, Maurice Geurts, Moss Linder & Timothy Shafer).

“The number of patients we serve is growing every year,” said Kim May, practice manager. “With Dr. Backus planning to retire in the next few years, and because our doctors must also help cover the Emergency Room, we want to be sure that people in the West River Valley and surrounding towns have adequate primary care coverage.”

Dr. Barstow was born in Poitiers, France (her parents were graduate students in Medieval French Language and Literature at the time); the family moved to Pennsylvania when she was 18 months old. They then moved to Storrs, Connecticut, which is where Alexandra attended high school. She graduated from Harvard University in 1988 with a BA in History and Science, which she followed with a four-year Peace Corps stint in Niger. She speaks fluent Hausa (but doesn’t anticipate that she’ll be using the language much in Vermont).

After returning from Niger, Dr. Barstow worked for the World Bank, doing research on the Middle East and North Africa. A year at the School of Public Health at Columbia followed, after which she attended the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, graduating in 2001; she completed her residency at University of Vermont in 2004.

Dr. Barstow and her husband, Michael, have two girls - Julia, age 2, and Annelise, 3 months. When she’s not practicing medicine, Dr. Barstow enjoys hiking, skiing, contra dancing, and knitting.

What brought Dr. Barstow here? “Grace Cottage is ‘on the map’ at the University of Vermont because Dr. Backus is pretty famous, and I also heard about it from Dr. Geurts, who was a year ahead of me up there,” she said. “Now that I’ve seen Grace Cottage up close, I like the old-fashioned country doctor feel of the place. People here care that they do a good job, and the community support is a reflection of that.”