Dr. Shannon Coombs joined the Department of Medicine in the Division of Hospital Medicine as an Instructor in June 2025. She grew up in Elmsford, New York before attending Howard University in Washington, DC where she graduated summa cum laude with honors distinction with a Bachelor of Arts in History as well as being inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. There, she was inspired by her university’s motto of ‘Truth and Service’ to engage in service activism by working with a non-profit called LIFT-DC to help families break cycles of poverty.
After college, she worked as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in South Korea teaching conversational English to high school students. She engaged students outside of the classroom through sponsoring them to participate in a US Embassy funded Korea-Japan English Camp and international affairs English debate competitions. Dr. Coombs took the lessons learned about service and communication to medical school at Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine Arizona-Florida. While in medical school, she continued service activities as cultural humility officer for a student-founded refugee clinic and organizer of a holiday health fair and gift drive for a shelter.
Dr. Coombs completed her internal medicine internship and residency at WashU Medicine/Barnes-Jewish Hospital 2022-2025. Her research interests include health disparities, obesity, lifestyle modifications for disease prevention and implementation of interventions to bridge gaps in gastroenterological care. Outside of medicine, she enjoys checking restaurants off her 200+ STL Yelp list, cooking, listening to audiobooks and accomplishing her fitness bucket list.