Schweitzer Fellow promoting children's health through Cherokee traditions
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Media Contact: Kayley Spielbusch | Digital Communications Specialist | 918-561-5759 | kspielb@okstate.edu
Hayden Kingfisher is educating students on diabetes prevention through Cherokee culture.
Kingfisher, a second-year medical student at the Oklahoma State University College of Osteopathic Medicine at the Cherokee Nation, is a part of the 2024-25 Albert Schweitzer Fellowship Tulsa cohort. Tulsa is one of 13 program sites in the United States. The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship equips graduate and professional students with the leadership skills to address unmet health care needs.
Kingfisher’s journey to medicine began as a child. Growing up in Bossier City, Louisiana, he spent a lot of time in the emergency room.
“For some reason, I couldn’t figure out how to take my head and not slam it against something,” he joked. “I also think after a certain number of stitches, they have to start recruiting you.”
The kindness the physicians and health care providers treated Kingfisher with stuck with him, and those experiences inspired him to pursue medicine.
“Eventually, all I could talk about was being like them, and that feeling stuck with me,” he said. “When it was time to decide on a career, there wasn’t anything else I wanted to do.”
Kingfisher was motivated to apply for the Schweitzer Fellowship by previous participants from the OSU-COM CN campus. While he didn’t know much about the program initially, he respected the fellows and how they represented themselves.
After learning more about the fellowship’s work, Kingfisher realized it was an opportunity to serve the Native American community in Tahlequah.
His project is a health and wellness initiative dedicated to preventative diabetes education for students at the Cherokee Nation Immersion School.
As a Cherokee Nation citizen, Kingfisher aims to give back to the students in his program like the community has given back to him.
“The opportunities that have been poured into me by our people allowed me to pursue my dream of a medical education. With the students, we speak a lot about their opportunity to do the same, whatever that may be,” he said.
Kingfisher’s project combines health education with Cherokee tradition with the students learning in visual, auditory and kinetic forms and in both Cherokee and English. Utilizing Cherokee foods and activities, the program encourages healthy lifestyles among students.
"The opportunities that have been poured into me by our people allowed me to pursue
my dream of a medical education. With the students, we speak a lot about their opportunity
to do the same, whatever that may be."
He credits the students’ enthusiasm and love of learning to the project’s success.
“I cannot express enough how impressed I have been with the students. They are an inspiration to me. There’s nothing better than being greeted by their smiling faces each time I visit,” he said.
Recently, Kingfisher and the Cherokee Immersion School team partnered with a representative from Cherokee Nation Public Health to promote various grants at the school. In time, they hope to establish community meetings led by OSU-COM at the Cherokee Nation students at the school.
These community meetings would be geared toward parents and faculty on the same topics being taught to the students. The goal is for this information to have a downstream impact on the students’ health literacy and appreciation for their own health.
Kingfisher is grateful the Schweitzer Fellowship granted him this opportunity.
“Applying for the fellowship was one of the best decisions I have made. I encourage anyone who wants to better their community to look into applying,” he said.