Judith Salmon Kaur, M.D. (B.S. Med.’77), heads a high-profile cancer program for American Indians at the world renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Dr. Kaur is widely respected among her peers as a pioneering physician and researcher in the area of American Indian health. Kaur also leads a nationwide campaign to educate Native American and other women about a life-saving vaccine against the main infection that causes cervical cancer.
     

Kaur heads three high-impact Mayo programs:
• Native Web, which trains nurses to provide breast and cervical cancer screening and education to Indians on reservations and in urban clinics.
• Native C.I.R.C.L.E., which provides culturally appropriate cancer education materials for lay persons, allied health, and clinicians working in Native communities. 
• Spirit of E.A.G.L.E.S., which empowers intervention studies in Native populations, provides scholarship support for students in medicine or biological sciences training, and advocates for improved cancer prevention and control in American Indian and Alaska Native populations. 

Judith Kaur, M.D., center, was honored with a star quilt at this spring’s North Dakota Women’s Health Research Conference.  With her are Jacque Gray, Ph.D., assistant professor, left, and Twyla Baker-Demaray, research analyst, both from the Center for Rural Health.

With career research grants totaling close to $20 million, Kaur, who graduated from high school when she was 17 and had a Master’s degree in counseling by the time she was 21, is a key player in fight against cancer—especially cervical cancer—among American Indians. She and an American Indian colleague were the first to discover that American Indians were succumbing fast to some very nasty cancers.

Kaur, a Choctaw Indian and one of only two board-certified American Indian oncologists, delivered a clarion call about cervical cancer to the North Dakota Women’s Health Research Conference this spring at the UND Wellness Center. The human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine is an infectious agent that’s directly linked with cervical cancer. 

“For women to understand the need for this vaccine, they need to understand the connection between the HPV infection and cervical cancer,” says Kaur, who was instrumental in bringing the American Indian cancer crisis to federal attention. 

Kaur didn’t map out this stellar career when she went to college the first time and was at home with her daughter. Kaur realized that she was ready for something more—something deeply tied to her cultural roots. She went to medical school and focused on Native American health issues. After starting an oncology practice in Grand Forks, she became celebrated among tribal health leaders for her cancer work. She also began intensive cancer research that continues to this day.

About 15 years ago, Kaur went to the Mayo Clinic to launch the most widely respected group of American Indian health initiatives in the country. She is Mayo’s medical director for the Native American Programs and professor of Oncology at Mayo’s College of Medicine. She is the principal investigator for a molecular markers study in breast cancer in American Indian and Alaska Native women and also a mammographic and clinical risk factor analysis study.

And just in case you thought she might take a breather now and then, Kaur also is medical director for the Mayo Clinic Hospice, and she chairs the Palliative Care Task Force.