PHOENIX — Dena Wilson never doubted what she wanted to do with her life while growing up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Her mother worked at the Indian Health Service as a social worker, and aside from a brief desire to be a bird in kindergarten, Wilson knew she wanted to become a doctor.
Wilson attended Chadron State College in Nebraska and then the University of Washington for medical school. After that, she pursued a cardiology fellowship at the University of Arizona’s medical center, and she worked for a native cardiology program in Northern Arizona before coming to Phoenix to work for the Indian Health Service.
“Just growing up, receiving care in the Indian Health Service, knowing there was such a shortage, and never seeing any other native providers, this was something I wanted to do,” Wilson said.
Wilson belongs to an exclusive club. Not only is she the lone cardiologist working for the Indian Health Service in Phoenix, but she’s also Native American, a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe.
Of the nearly 19,000 graduates of medical school last year in the U.S., only 31 were Native American. Here in Arizona, there’s an estimated 13,542 physicians statewide, and only 107 were Native American – that’s less than 1 percent, according to a database by the Association of American Medical Colleges using 2013 numbers.
Experts said the shortage of Native American doctors in Arizona — in which there are more than 350,000 Native Americans — is concerning because it impacts the effectiveness of health care delivery overall, as well as the research into health disparities.
