An original pioneer of rural health care in the state of Mississippi, as well as school based clinics for adolescent care, Dr. Aaron Shirley has always worked to provide quality and accessible health care for the poor and under served populations of the state.
           
His undergraduate studies began at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi, and he received his Medical Degree from Meharry Medical School located in Nashville, Tennessee in 1959. He also did an internship at Hubbard Hospital before completing his residency in pediatrics in 1967 at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.

In 1970, Dr. Shirley, along with others, developed the largest community health center in the state, which now serves more that 40,000 indigent and low income patients annually. In 1979, he initiated a comprehensive health clinic within an inner city school to provide comprehensive health and counseling services with special emphasis on reducing teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, drug abuse, teenage violence, and mental health problems. This program has since served as a model for other school-based clinics nationwide.

His commitment to quality health care led him to be active in the development and/or organization of various agencies and projects which shared his dream of quality, affordable health care for all individuals. Some of those agencies included Mississippi Action for Progress, the Mississippi Association of Community Health Care for the Poor, the Medgar Evers Community Health Center, the Tufts Delta Health Center, and the G.A. Carmichael Community Health Center.

Dr. Shirley has served or is presently serving as a member of the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta, the Select Panel for the Promotion of Child Health, the National Health Insurance Advisory Committee, the Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., the Field Foundation in New York, and most noted, Dr. Shirley served as a working group member with President Clinton's Health Care Reform Task Force in 1993.

He is the recipient of many outstanding awards both locally and nationally, and in 1993, Dr. Aaron Shirley received the MacArthur Fellows Award which recognizes devotion, dedication, and strides made in one's field.

Currently, Dr. Shirley serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Jackson Medical Mall Foundation, Director of Community Medical Services, and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Mississippi.  His efforts are focused on developing and implementing innovative measures to access quality healthcare for the uninsured and underinsured residents of Mississippi.   Dr. Shirley is working closely with the State Division of Medicaid as well as with hospitals and other not for profit agencies to reduce the health disparities for Mississippians.   His model for Hinds County is currently being reviewed for possible statewide replication, as well as nationally, through the Robert Wood Johnson’s Communities in Charge Program.  In 2005, Dr. Shirley was honored with the endowment of the Aaron Shirley Chair for the Study of Health Disparities at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and he was selected to serve as a member of the Citizens Health Care Working Group mandated by Congress to hold hearings and community meetings across the country on health care coverage and cost issues, and to issue a “Health Report to the American People.”