Temple Gymnast Hannah Stallings is Helping Others Through Healthcare

This is the third in a series highlighting Temple Athletics' Women in STEM.

For the first on fencer, Anastasia Yankovskiy, click here.

For the second on rower Renee Goga, click here.

Junior gymnast Hannah Stallings has one purpose for working in healthcare: helping people. Stallings, a 2022 First-Team All-EAGL selection, is a Health Professions major with minors in Clinical Psychology and Nutrition.

Stallings is specifically hoping to use her career in healthcare to improve maternal and child health. "I enjoy empowering mothers," she said. "A lot of people think you can't have a career and be a mother. I like to remind them that they can be a mom and still achieve their dreams."

The Raleigh, North Carolina native has cited her Christian faith as a fuel for her desire to service people, especially those who are hurting. That passion for helping others sparked the athlete's interest in working at a pregnancy center. This summer, Stallings worked as an administrative and sonographer shadowing assistant at Gateway Women's Care in her hometown of Raleigh. Her administrative work included filing medical records and updating ultrasound reports. Her shadowing work included serving as a mandatory chaperone to ultrasounds, where she listened to and observed ultrasounds at the six-week stage.

Stallings enjoyed her experience at Gateway Women's Care and is hoping to pursue a similar career. She plans on obtaining her certification in sonography as a registered diagnostic medical sonographer, or RDMS, which will open doors for her to work at pregnancy centers. Stallings also plans on earning a specialization in obstetrics and a certification in infant massage therapy. She specifically has an interest in working with teenagers at a crisis pregnancy center, or even opening her own center someday.

Stallings has also considered pursuing a master's degree in nutrition to become a registered dietitian. "Nutrition is something that I didn't know much about before college," she said, "but it's important to know about it in my field because it changes during pregnancy."

The gymnast's study of nutrition has also helped her athletic career. "It's something I've really tried to apply–I'm learning so much about recommendations for carbohydrates, proteins, and fats," she remarked. She enjoys using nutrition to be creative in planning meals that meet her specific needs as an athlete.

Stallings also feels the impact of her Clinical Psychology minor. In regards to working in healthcare, she is interested in using psychology to understand her patients as they go through crises. Psychology has also helped Stallings to be a better teammate. "It's made me more culturally competent, and even more able to help my teammates cope with stress in small ways," she stated.

On the topic of being a woman in STEM, Stallings remarked, "the word that keeps coming to mind is 'honor.' Not everyone has had these opportunities despite their passion, qualifications, or desire to be qualified. I'm very grateful for the opportunities I have."

She also recognizes that being a woman in the field of maternal care is important. She hopes that sharing that identity with her patients will help her connect with them both as a provider and on a personal level.

There is a lot of overlap in gymnastics and maternal healthcare for Stallings. Both require a lot of hard work and exceptional time management. Stallings relies on planning ahead and making time for herself as strategies to handle her two commitments. She also prioritizes making time to go to church, as having non-work aspects of her life is helpful to maintaining a strong work ethic.

She also sees overlap symbolically. "In gymnastics, it's not just grace, which is what you typically see," she said. "It's also power and grit. Motherhood is the same–there are messes and hard work behind the beauty."

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Temple Gymnast Hannah Stallings is Helping Others Through Healthcare

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Hannah Stallings

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