Fairbanks Tall Timbers: Shellie Foint Anderson

The Fairbanks Tall Timber Series was created to honor those who have served the Fairbanks community well. Join accomplished journalist Tom Hewitt either in person or via Zoom as he interviews these stalwart members of our community.

Shelly Foint-Anderson serves as the Public Health Nurse manager at the Fairbanks Regional Public Health Center, and the past decade of pandemics, public health crises, and more have given her plenty of stories. Foint-Anderson’s job combating infectious diseases and helping parents maintain their children’s vaccinations (as well as their own) has come with unique challenges in the age of vaccine science skepticism and online influencers and wellness gurus who are sometimes all too willing to promote their personal brands through medical misinformation. But she says one of her biggest takeaways from the Covid-19 pandemic was how heartened she was by the community’s resilience and the partnerships that community organizations forged to fight the disease and its impacts.