Forty Under 40: Dr. Gary Berner

Dr. Gary Berner comes from a family with a long history in healthcare. His grandfather was a pediatrician, his father was a physician and his mother was a nurse practitioner. His oldest brother is a Fayetteville psychiatrist.

“I’ve never been one to be very rebellious,” he joked. “My thought of rebellion was … maybe I’ll be an ecologist. I tried that in college for a while and found myself staring at a big bucket of grass and bugs for hours in a research lab and thought: ‘You know what, I like people.’ I’ll go out to the woods and hike, camp and canoe on the weekends. And meeting with people and helping improve their health, that could be my day job.”

In 2012, he started practicing medicine after completing his medical degree from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. After completing his residency at UAMS with internal medicine and pediatrics specialties in 2016, he moved from Little Rock to join Springdale-based healthcare provider Community Clinic. He was named to his existing role in 2019.

“Landing at Community Clinic has been an absolute blessing,” Berner said. “It is a unique organization that is proactive and progressive — very much finds that balance between looking at the patient in front of you and how we can best take care of that person … I feel like I’m a part of something bigger than myself.”

Berner has been pivotal in expanding the clinic’s reach, which includes more than 28 clinics in Northwest Arkansas. Over the past 20 years, it’s grown from volunteers to 430 full-time healthcare professionals.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Berner served on the Fayetteville Board of Health and worked to ensure the community could maintain operations while balancing safe and appropriate activities.