{"id":14152,"date":"2025-11-13T12:39:52","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T18:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.und.edu\/for-your-health\/?p=14152"},"modified":"2025-11-13T12:39:52","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T18:39:52","slug":"the-chance-of-a-lifetime-50-year-m-d-grad-and-inmed-alum-mike-vandall-reflects-on-a-career-in-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.und.edu\/for-your-health\/2025\/11\/13\/the-chance-of-a-lifetime-50-year-m-d-grad-and-inmed-alum-mike-vandall-reflects-on-a-career-in-medicine\/","title":{"rendered":"The chance of a lifetime: 50-year M.D. grad and INMED alum Mike Vandall reflects on a career in medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"

To hear Dr. Mike Vandall tell it, he almost missed the chance of a lifetime 50 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a freshman in medical school when I saw this elderly guy sitting in the back of our classroom \u2013 he was Native American,\u201d Vandall explained. \u201cI went back and talked to him before class started one day, and he told me about the INMED program. He said, \u2018Mike, we\u2019ve only got four slots filled, but we have space for five.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The observer was Dr. Ralph Dru, who was faculty at the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences (SMHS) for a short time in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

Recruiting for the School\u2019s Indians Into Medicine (INMED) program \u2013 one of the world\u2019s first Indigenous medical training programs \u2013 Dru told Vandall, whose father grew up in Wagner, S.D., on the Yankton Lakota Reservation, that the final spot in the cohort was his. If he wanted it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe encouraged me to apply, and I\u2019m really glad I did,\u201d Vandall smiled, sitting in the INMED suite on the UND campus in Grand Forks in July. \u201cI would have had a different journey if I had never participated in INMED. I don\u2019t know what my life would have been like.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in my day…<\/h3>\n

Whatever direction his life would have gone without INMED, chances are that the 1976 grad of UND\u2019s medical doctor program, now in his 70s, would still be bouncing around the country. Having lost hardly a step, the quick-moving Vandall still travels extensively, he said, including flying when he gets the chance.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s tremendously grateful for the life he\u2019s been given.<\/p>\n

Vandall was back in Grand Forks this summer not only to talk about the 50th anniversary of his own medical school graduation, but to speak with middle and high school students at the INMED Summer Institute.<\/p>\n

Designed for kiddos in grades 7-12 who are interested in healthcare careers, the Summer Institute (SI) provides Indigenous students with enhanced training in biology, chemistry, study skills, basic life support (first aid), math, and physics.<\/p>\n

Think of SI as a mini college prep course.<\/p>\n

Vandall was scheduled to speak at the month-long Institute\u2019s closing banquet.<\/p>\n

Before the banquet, though, he sat down with\u00a0North Dakota Medicine<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>to muse on how different health education is today\u00a0<\/em>relative to when he was a student.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been tremendous change in all those decades, starting with medical curriculum,\u201d he said. \u201cPatient care starts much sooner. And the technology \u2013 it\u2019s been mind-boggling how it changes every couple-three years. Then there\u2019s more attention given to our Indigenous people, more focusing on them to make sure they can get into medical school and stay there to become good quality providers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The politics of medicine<\/h3>\n

Because it wasn\u2019t always this way.<\/p>\n

Despite his own Indigenous background, Vandall confessed to not having heard of INMED, which was founded in 1972, when he was applying to medical school.<\/p>\n

Attending a university-based medical school just wasn\u2019t something most American Indians interested in helping others heal did back then.<\/p>\n

After graduating from UND in 1976, Vandall ended up at the U.S. Public Health Service hospital in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Although he matched into obstetrics & gynecology, Vandall said that he always had a place in his heart for underserved populations facing challenges brought on by what are now known as the social drivers of health. This, he said, gave him something of a front-row seat to witnessing the health challenges facing much of the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the hospital for a lot of merchant seamen who would travel through San Francisco and travel all around the world,\u201d he reflected. \u201cIt was also the hospital for the U.S. Coast Guard, and we had a fair amount of urban Indians and indigent people there. I treated leprosy and a case of disseminated fungal disease called Coccidioidomycosis. I had a beautiful experience with a lot of interesting pathology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vandall was also a stone\u2019s throw from where the American Indian Movement (AIM) had staged its Alcatraz Island occupation only a few years earlier \u2013 and practiced on an often Indigenous population in the wake of AIM actions in Wounded Knee, S.D., and news that a shootout with federal agents had taken place near Pine Ridge, S.D., not far from where he\u2019d grown up.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I remember Russell Means and Dennis Banks\u2026 Leonard Peltier,\u201d Vandall trailed off, referencing a series of AIM activists whose names were national news in the middle 1970s. \u201cI didn\u2019t have much time to pay attention to it, though, because we were way too busy \u2013 either in medical school or in the residency. You just showed up for work. You didn\u2019t have time to read a newspaper or watch a lot of TV.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just did what you had to do and tried to maybe keep your marriage together because your wife never saw you,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n

Despite his efforts to tune out the news, such experiences influenced Vandall\u2019s decision to spend a career practicing in underserved rural areas on and off the reservation \u2013 from Tuba City, Ariz., and Ada, Okla., to Minot, N.D., and, yes, Wagner and Pine Ridge \u2013 not only as an Ob\/Gyn but later as a locum tenens physician.<\/p>\n

In this capacity he often practiced at Indian Health Service (IHS) clinics.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraditionally, the Indian Health Service \u2013 60 or 70 years ago \u2013 was seen as somewhat inferior,\u201d Vandall admitted. \u201cIt got better starting 30 years ago. That was really because of things like INMED. This program is one factor as to why the quality of medicine has improved on reservations.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what a factor it has been. According to UND officials, UND INMED has had a hand in producing at least 20% of all American Indian \/ Alaska Native physicians practicing today. Nearly 4,000 indigenous students from grade school through a variety of professional training programs have come through INMED since 1973.<\/p>\n

‘I’m sure you’ll orient well’<\/h3>\n

Back in North Dakota, the cycle of improved care for and by the next generation of Indigenous providers continues.<\/p>\n

\u201cINMED is one factor as to why the quality of medicine has improved on reservations.\u201d<\/p>\n

On his way out of the INMED suite, Vandall bumped into Skye Bernstein, a first-year M.D. student who is part of the INMED Class of 2029.<\/p>\n

Explaining to Vandall how her parents moved from the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma to Siskiyou County in Northern California decades ago, Bernstein confirmed that she grew up an easy 15 minutes from Mount Shasta.<\/p>\n

Vandall was more than familiar with the area. As an instrument-rated commercial pilot, he\u2019d flown over Mt. Shasta \u2013 a long time ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, congratulations,\u201d Vandall smiled at Bernstein. \u201cI\u2019m sure you\u2019ll orient well.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a poignant scene: the INMED veteran who had practiced in both San Francisco and Pine Ridge counseling the newcomer back in North Dakota on the cusp of the UND M.D. program\u2019s 50th anniversary.<\/p>\n

Almost as if the circle was now complete.<\/p>\n

\u201cWill you be here all day?\u201d Bernstein asked.<\/p>\n

Shaking his head, Vandall explained his busy schedule to Bernstein, who just smiled.<\/p>\n

And with another congratulations to the young student, the obstetrician-gynecologist who never stops moving was out the door.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To hear Dr. Mike Vandall tell it, he almost missed the chance of a lifetime 50 years ago. \u201cI was a freshman in medical school when I saw this elderly guy sitting in the back of our classroom \u2013 he was Native American,\u201d Vandall explained. \u201cI went back and talked to him before class started […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":14153,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3606,1456,450,3756],"class_list":["post-14152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-class-of-1976","tag-indians-into-medicine","tag-inmed","tag-vandall"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe chance of a lifetime: 50-year M.D. grad and INMED alum Mike Vandall reflects on a career in medicine - For Your Health<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.und.edu\/for-your-health\/2025\/11\/13\/the-chance-of-a-lifetime-50-year-m-d-grad-and-inmed-alum-mike-vandall-reflects-on-a-career-in-medicine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The chance of a lifetime: 50-year M.D. grad and INMED alum Mike Vandall reflects on a career in medicine - 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