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Yvette Roubideaux, assistant professor of family and community medicine at The University of Arizona College of Medicine, has been named director of the Indian Health Service, becoming the first American Indian woman to serve in the directorship.

Dr. Yvette Roubideaux, an assistant professor of family and community medicine at The University of Arizona College of Medicine, has been named director of the Indian Health Service.

President Barack Obama announced in March that he intended to nominate Roubideaux, a member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe, to the position. She is the first American Indian woman to serve in the directorship position.

Roubideaux, who previously worked in the Indian Health Service as a medical officer, has conducted extensive research on American Indian health issues, with a focus on diabetes in American Indians/Alaska Natives and American Indian health policy.

The Indian Health Service is a program in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that exists to promote the physical, mental, social and spiritual health of American Indians and Alaska Natives, according to the program's Web site.

Roubideaux previously served as clinical director on the San Carlos Indian Reservation and in the Gila River Indian Community and, from 1999-2000, served as president of the Association of American Indian Physicians. She was later appointed to the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary's Advisory Committee on Minority Health from 2000-2002.

Having received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School and her master's in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health, Roubideaux completed the Primary Care Internal Medicine Residency Program at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston.

She co-directs a program implementing diabetes prevention and cardiovascular disease prevention activities in dozens of American Indian and Alaska Native communities. She also serves as director of two programs – the UA/ITCA Indians Into Medicine Program and the Student Development Core of the ITCA/UA American Indian Research Center for Health – which focus on recruiting American Indian and Alaska Native students into health and research professions.

For her work, Roubideaux has received numerous awards.

She earned the American Diabetes Association's 2008 Addison B. Scoville Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service and the 2004 Indian Physician of the Year Award from the Association of American Indian Physicians, among others.

She is co-editor of the APHA book entitled "Promises to Keep: Public Health Policy for American Indians and Alaska Natives in the 21st Century" and has authored several monographs and peer-reviewed publications on American Indian/Alaska Native health issues, research and policy.