Anne Newland, MD, MPH

I trained as an internist and a pediatrician, and I have spent most of my working life in places where the nearest referral center is a long drive away. I studied at Barnard College, took my medical degree at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, and completed a residency in Internal Medicine-Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee in Memphis, where I served as chief resident for internal medicine. Later I went to the Harvard School of Public Health for an MPH as a Commonwealth Fund Fellow in Minority Health Policy, which is where I started thinking about health systems and not only patients.

My first eight years after training were with the Indian Health Service in Kayenta, Arizona. I arrived as a general medical officer, became chief of staff, and finished as acting clinical director with responsibility for pharmacy, radiology, the laboratory, and the medical staff. That work taught me most of what I know about delivering care across distance and scarcity, and about the difference between a plan that reads well and one that holds up on a Tuesday in February.

In 2013 I joined North Country HealthCare in Flagstaff as deputy chief medical officer, then served as chief medical officer and, from late 2015 until early 2026, as chief executive. At the time I led it, North Country was a federally qualified health center serving 13 communities across northern Arizona, with close to 500 employees and more than $50M in annual revenue. In those years we founded the North Country HealthCare Foundation and launched a community-based family medicine residency program, and during the pandemic I spoke nationally about COVID-19 and its impact on the Navajo Nation.

I now work through Towering House Consulting. The thread running through all of it is the same: reducing health disparities for rural and underserved communities, and strengthening the training pipeline for people from underrepresented populations. Those two interests are why I took the jobs I took, and they are what I bring to the advisory work now. I also write occasionally about the questions that come up most often, over in insights.