Yvette Roubideaux, a member of the the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, is a Native American physician and public health administrator. She is currently the Director of the Indian Health Service (IHS).
Roubideaux completed her BA degree at Harvard and continued on to earn her MD at Harvard in 1989. She then completed her residency requirement in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in 1992 followed by four years of clinical practice. Roubideaux then returned to Harvard to earn a MPH in 1997 and carried out a Commonwealth Fund/Harvard University Fellowship in Minority Health Policy.
Roubideaux served as assistant professor of family and community medicine at the University of Arizona where her research and teaching focused on diabetes in American Indians/Alaska Natives and Indian health policy. She also served in a faculty role at the University of Colorado in the Native Elder Resource Center Native Investigator Program.
Roubideaux's career in IHS started when she served as medical officer and clinical director on the San Carlos Indian Reservation and in the Gila River Indian Community. In was in 2009 when President Obama nominated Roubideaux for the position of Director of IHS and she was confirmed in the position in May of that year becoming the first female to be appointed to the position.
Roubideaux was added to our PISA List in 2013.