Carlie Field, MD
Recent Graduate Achievement Award 2024
Recent Graduate Achievement Award honors recent graduates who demonstrate outstanding achievements benefiting their communities, practice of medicine, and the provision of healthcare.
Dr. Carlie Field received her Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Colorado School of Medicine in 2015. She works at Clinica Family Health in Thornton, CO as an OB/GYN physician, offering full-spectrum care to low-income and other underserved groups. She also provides healthcare services at Planned Parenthood Great Plains in Kansas.
A love of science was fostered by Dr. Field’s parents, who are both engineers, and her desire to form human connections led to her interest in medicine. She took advantage of an opportunity to shadow her pediatrician, and she also witnessed life in other parts of the world, traveling to Senegal to volunteer with a healthcare group and to Nicaragua to work with coffee farmers. These experiences solidified her interest in health equity.
After Dr. Field finished her residency at University of Washington in Seattle, she completed a Health Equity Action and Leadership (HEAL) fellowship, which brought her to Navajo Nation in Chinle, AZ, and then to Neno, Malawi, of the poorest districts in the country. The timing of the fellowship coincided with the onset of the COVID pandemic, which further highlighted the structural violence and health inequities that exist in global and rural health. It also proved to be pivotal in solidifying Dr. Field’s interest in working alongside communities that don’t have equal access to medical care and are often intentionally unseen and unheard in our healthcare system.
Once the fellowship ended, Dr. Field accepted a position at the Federally Qualified Healthcare Center (FQHC) Clinica in Thornton where she uses her experience to provide care to marginalized populations, including a large number of refugees. As an OB/GYN physician, she works to share her knowledge with nurse practitioners, family medicine physicians, and physician assistants, supporting them as they care for the more high-risk patients in our community.
Dr. Field’s work also extends to reproductive health justice as a “fly in” provider for Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which struggles to find and hire local, rural physicians. She believes that maintaining access to abortion is essential, and limiting or denying this type of care can cause devastating health effects.
One of Dr. Field’s goals is to continue challenging herself – to be visible in the community and to talk with representatives about health equity and the financial challenges that are facing community health centers like Clinica, all while ensuring her patients feel seen and heard.