Shelby Dean, DO, MPH was born in Tucson Arizona in 1990 and moved to Springville Utah in 1999. She graduated from Springville High School and then began attending Brigham Young University in 2008. She took a break during her studies to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Berlin, Germany for 18 months from 2011-2013. After she returned, she applied for the Army's Health Services Scholarship Program (HPSP) and was granted an Army scholarship. She graduated from BYU with a degree in nutritional science in 2014. She then married Adam Burton and went to Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine from 2014-2018.
Dr. Dean completed a transitional year internship at Wiliam Beaumont Army Medical Center at Fort Bliss Texas. During the transitional year, she attended the Combat Casualty Care Course (C4). Following graduation from her transitional year in 2019, she worked for three years as a general medical officer at the 22nd chemical battalion at Fort Bliss. While she was there, she had her two children, Vance and Rhett, and attended the courses Medical Management of Chemical and Biological Casualties (MCBC), Field Management of Chemical and Biological Casualties (FCBC), and Medical Effects of Ionizing Radiation (MEIR). She also established a practice of doing vaccine, vision testing, and periodic health assessment rodeos twice a month.
She was selected for her current assignment, the Army’s dual aerospace and occupational medicine residency. While in this program at Fort Novosel, she completed the Aviation Safety Officer Course, the Aviation Medical Examiner’s course, and wrote an article on gallstones for the Army Aviation Magazine. She obtained a Master of Public Health degree from the University of West Florida, and her research project studied the frequency of thyroid cancer in Army helicopter pilots vs. Army combat arms officers.