Chris Derauf, MD, Mayo Clinic professor in the Department of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine

Chris Derauf has been a pediatrician for the past 32 years. He grew up in
Minnesota, only a short walk from Bdote, where the Minnesota and
Mississippi Rivers come together. Following graduation from the University
of Minnesota medical school, he completed his pediatric residency training
at the University of Hawaii. For more than 20 years he worked at Kokua
Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services, a federally qualified
community health center in the ahupua’a of Kalihi on the island of
O’ahu. This center is unique in its focus on social determinants of
health, reconciliation, neighbors helping neighbors, and land-
based healing. There Chris co-founded a medical-legal clinic
where doctors and lawyers work together to provide legal
advocacy to low-income clients. Chris also led the Hawaii site of
the multicenter National Institutes of Health-funded IDEAL (Infant
Development, Environment and Lifestyle) study, the largest
longitudinal study of the child health and developmental
consequences of prenatal methamphetamine use.

In 2011 Chris returned to Minnesota with his family to work at
Mayo Clinic where he is a professor in the Department of Pediatric
and Adolescent Medicine. His clinical, teaching, research,
prevention, and advocacy work focuses on caring for children and
families in whom there are concerns for abuse or neglect. He is
medical director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Safe and Healthy
Children and Adolescents. A current focus of the Center is the
development of supportive, collaborative, and non-punitive wrap
around community and medical services for families impacted by
parental substance use. Chris also provides medical expertise to
the White Earth Tribal Child Advocacy Center in Naytahwaush, Minnesota.