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.