Native American family physician brings trust and healing home to Cherokee Nation

“I was always a patient within the Cherokee Nation Health Services growing up, so I knew I wanted to go back, give back to my people and be part of that community,” said Kirk, who has been a family physician at the Cherokee Nation’s Sam Hider Health Center in Jay, Oklahoma, since graduating from the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine’s family medicine residency in Tulsa in 2018.

Kirk precepts medical students and physician assistant students from Oklahoma State’s College of Osteopathic Medicine at the Cherokee Nation, the first medical school affiliated with a Native American tribe. Students spend rural and family medicine rotations in Kirk’s clinic, which is less than an hour north of the school in Tahlequah. First-year students from the school also visit to get “a heads up and learn what to expect” prior to their clinical rotations.

“That's fun to get to see them experience clinical medicine for the first time,” Kirk said.

American Indian and Alaska Natives account for nearly 3% of the U.S. population, but they represent just 0.3% of U.S. physicians, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. The Cherokee Nation school produced its first graduates in 2024.

“I think that our population struggles with trust of medical professionals,” Kirk said. “There’s always been a lot of turnover within Indian Health or Cherokee Nation among the clinicians. And so, patients don't always feel like they have someone that they can relate to. That was a big part of it for me, being someone who could help elevate the community, someone they could trust, someone that they could relate to and actually make a difference in their health.”

Making a difference on Native American health disparities

Native Americans have a shorter life expectancy than the general population and have higher incidence rates for several health conditions, including heart disease, lung cancer, diabetes, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Kirk sought additional certification to provide medication assisted treatment to help patients with substance use disorder, which is another issue where Native Americans have higher incidence rates than the general population. She said treating SUD and hepatitis C are among the most satisfying parts of her practice. (Native American and Alaska Natives are more than three times as likely to die from hepatitis C than non-Hispanic white Americans.)

“Not everyone does, but I think every family doctor can treat hepatitis C and opiate use disorder,” she said. “Medication assisted therapy for opiate use disorder is one of the most fulfilling things that I get to do because it does make such a big difference in people's lives. They're able to hold jobs and get their kids back. People still have a big misconception of how hepatitis C is treated. Letting them know that they're not going to be super sick during treatment, that the treatment will work and we can cure them of hep C and not have potential complications down the road has made a big difference for a lot of patients. I really enjoy that.”

Although Kirk’s practice is focused on Native American health, her advocacy work is much broader. She’s the president-elect of the Oklahoma AFP.

One area of focus for her is rural health because more than one-third of the state’s population lives in rural areas.

Family medicine’s scope serves rural communities

“Knowing what family medicine means for rural communities has really pushed me because we need to make sure that family medicine has the appropriate scope, that we're supported and that we're training more family docs every year so that that our rural communities have access to the best care possible,” she said.

Kirk got involved early, helping launch the family medicine interest group on the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine’s Tulsa campus during her third year of medical school.

“We really wanted to push more of our students on that Tulsa campus, which is more of a community-based training, toward family medicine,” she said. “We really wanted to make sure that they got linked in with OAFP as well because you get to meet more people, have opportunities for lots of education and support by being linked in with your chapter.”

Kirk considered emergency medicine training, and she also enjoyed women’s health.

“Family medicine was a good combination of a little bit of everything,” she said. “My husband is a high school football coach, so I felt like he needed some sports medicine support, so family medicine made sense for that, too.”

Attending the AAFP’s National Conference of Family Medicine Residents and Medical Students (now FUTURE) after her third year in medical school helped solidify her choice, and a rural rotation early in her fourth year clinched it.

“My first rotation that year was my rural rotation in Grove, and it was with a few different family medicine doctors who did everything,” she said. “They did OB. They did endoscopy and ER shifts. So, I got to do all of that, too. That really sold me on family medicine.”