Alumni Features, Vitals Magazine Spring 2026

She Didn’t Take No
for an Answer

Sara K. Dye, MD, MED ’75 RES ’83 has transformed vascular and diabetes care in Native communities across the U.S. But first she had to fight to become a doctor.

A woman stands in front of a meter board at an event surrounded by people and decorations.

Sara K. Dye, MD, MED ’75 RES ’83 was recognized with the Career Achievement Alumni Award from Geisel School of Medicine in September 2025. Credit: Kata Sasvari

Published: 
By Jeremy Martin
6 min read
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The odds were stacked against Sara K. Dye, MD, MED ’75 RES ’83 when she set her mind on becoming a doctor, particularly as a woman of the Sac and Fox Nation, the largest of three federally recognized tribes of Sauk and Meskwaki (Fox) Indian peoples of central Oklahoma. In high school, her guidance counselor suggested secretarial school. Medical schools in Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas had already rejected her, and when she took the entrance exam for nursing school, she failed. A medical school interviewer had also raised the question: If Dye were to be admitted, how would she pay for her education?

Dye fought for years to gain access to a medical school education. In 1971 she finally did, becoming the first Native American woman to attend Dartmouth Medical School. She went on to become one of only 16 Native women who were surgeons when she began her career—blazing the way for more to follow.

And being the first isn’t something Dye has taken lightly. Her career has been characterized by extensive work to open the door to healthcare for others through her leadership within the Indian Health Service (IHS), a branch of the United States Department of Health and Human Services that advocates for more than 2.8 million Native American and Native Alaskan peoples across the U.S.

Kicking Open Healthcare Doors

On reservations, specialist care could be “200-some-odd miles this way and about 400 miles that way,” Dye says. “There might be one car between two families. And if that breaks down, they can’t get into town. Or if there’s a blizzard, they can’t drive for hours to the doctor.” This dearth of access exists across many of the country’s rural areas and has always been acute among Native populations.

While a surgeon at Carl Albert Indian Hospital in Ada, Oklahoma, Dye discovered that Native patients with diabetes were losing limbs at exceedingly high rates, a consequence of poor circulation that sometimes accompanies advanced diabetes and is exacerbated by limited access to specialty care.

To address this disparity, Dye established the IHS’s first noninvasive vascular laboratory. By using blood pressure cuffs and ultrasound to diagnose peripheral vascular disease early, Dye could identify blockages that could be cleared and predict amputations before they became inevitable. Besides providing better healthcare, it also spared patients from having to travel hundreds of miles for expensive diagnostic tests.

By this time, Dye was also traveling almost constantly across the U.S. to visit IHS clinics. She often gave lunch seminars that taught providers how to examine the unique features of diabetic feet.

These and other seemingly small changes had an outsized effect on reducing amputation rates and diabetic foot complications among Native populations. So Dye kept going, looking for new ways to improve patient access and healthcare through the IHS.

[Healthcare access] is less about proximity to major medical centers than bringing the right expertise to communities who need it.

Sara K. Dye, MD, MED ’75 RES ’83

One of Dye’s visionary ideas was to implement a third-party billing system, the first of its kind for the IHS, so that tribal healthcare facilities would be better poised to bring in revenue and retain staff. She pushed for infrastructure improvements to telemedicine networks, an almost unheard-of proposition at the time, while advocating for partnerships with off-reservation hospitals to reduce duplications in services. And as assistant professor of family medicine at the University of South Dakota, and adjunct faculty at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine, Dye built programs to train future physicians in the unique challenges and opportunities related to Native healthcare.

Healthcare access, as she saw it, was “less about proximity to major medical centers than bringing the right expertise to communities who needed it,” Dye says.

Eyes on the Prize

Dye’s medical career began years before arriving at Dartmouth. Initially rebuffed from attending medical school, she began working as an x-ray technician in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was there that she figured out how she might be able to fund her medical education.

A kind patient at the clinic where she worked, who had listened as she shared her dreams and worries about being able to afford medical school, told her about vocational rehabilitation services through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. “‘Something’s wrong with your eye,’ he had winked at me,” Dye remembers, in reference to the congenital eye condition that Dye had since childhood. That eye condition, the patient explained, could qualify her for vocational rehab funding, and be her ticket to medical school. And he was right.

Armed with that funding commitment, both for the necessary pre-med courses and for medical school, she just needed a medical school to give her a chance.

Steering Medicine Forward

Claire Alford, MPH ’26, embodies the future that renowned Native surgeon Sara K. Dye, MD, MED ’75 RES ’83 fought to make possible over five decades.

Alford, a descendant of the Absentee Shawnee Tribe, never expected to meet a Native woman doctor. But, like Dye, she aspires to become one and is pursuing a Master of Public Health degree at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth ahead of medical school, propelled by a desire to address health disparities she has seen firsthand.

Growing up in Santa Maria, California’s agricultural community, Alford watched farm workers suffer from treatable diseases while struggling to access care. That experience inspired Alford to work as a diabetes patient navigator at Indian Health Center of Santa Clara Valley before coming to Geisel. “Being able to help intervene and get them back on track was such a privilege,” she says.

Public health, Alford says, “allows providers to address inequities at the system level so patients no longer have to suffer from treatable things.” By carrying Dye’s legacy forward and honoring her ancestors, she continues a tradition of advocacy through education and service—proof that progress depends not only on movement, but on who steers it.

The first two Native Americans to graduate from Dartmouth Medical School, Sara K. Dye, MD, MED ’75 RES ’83, and Jeral Ahtone, MD, MED ’75 on campus as students.
Photo courtesy of Dartmouth Medicine, Fall 1995.
Dye and Ahtone back on campus for reunion in September 2025. Credit: Kata Sasvari

That chance came soon after, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs told her about a medical school “back East” that had started a Native American recruitment program. In 1970, Dartmouth President John Kemeny had vowed to strengthen the presence of Native American students at the College. By 1971, a handful of Native American men had enrolled at Dartmouth, but no women. Dye was the first.

Today, Dye is retired from being chief medical officer for the Aberdeen Area IHS and consulting surgeon at many facilities across the central U.S. She never wavered from her focus on access and advocacy, which has earned her multiple accolades over the years: the U.S. Public Health Service Physician Executive of the Year Award, the IHS Director’s Award, the Outstanding IHS Clinician Award, and the Friend of Nursing Award. In September 2025, she was recognized with the Career Achievement Alumni Award from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.

“I am grateful for the many advantages Dartmouth gave me to prepare me for a wonderful career and a love for a lifetime of learning and service,” said Dye during her award acceptance speech. “Becoming a doctor often felt impossible, but obstacles can be a path to success. These obstacles produced in me the perseverance that I hope will inspire others.”

To learn more about and connect with alumni, contact Mae Leonard at 603-646-5313 or Mae.Leonard@dartmouth.edu.

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