Carle Illinois College of Medicine student Zelda Moran is on a mission: to find solutions that meet the health care needs of people in the most medically underserved communities in the country.

“I hope, in a small way, to fill a gap in our health system which people are falling through,” Moran said.

Armed with a background in global health and training as a physician-innovator, Moran will take her place on the front lines of health care in July when she enters family medicine residency at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Her chosen specialty and location both reflect an intentional choice to reach patients in care ‘deserts’ – places where people have limited access to primary care.

Global health to local care

Even before medical school, Moran’s background in public health (she holds a master’s degree from Columbia University), research, and epidemiology opened opportunities to serve people and communities across the globe.

“I worked on projects in eight countries on topics ranging from tick-borne disease ecology in Panama to Ebola diagnostics in Guinea, to maternal health in Uganda. I really came to appreciate that when a lot of environmental and social factors are against you, medicine alone can sometimes have very little to offer,” she said.

Moran says in areas with scarce health resources, like rural New Mexico, the importance of prevention, education, outreach, and community medicine in advancing overall health is magnified. “The challenge in serving an underserved area is that you have to make a plan to treat each patient while also considering all the factors in their community that affect them,” she said.

Personal impact, proactive care

The opportunity to make personal connections and have a direct impact on the lives of patients, their families, and the community drew Moran to specialize in family medicine. “Family docs treat all ages and stages of life, from birth to death and everything in between. A trusted family doctor is there for it all,” she said.

CI MED’s unique curriculum emphasizes the importance of primary care. CI MED students begin their clinical exposure under the supervision of a family medicine provider, a pediatrician, or an internal medicine doctor in the second week of medical school.

“The reason we start with primary care is that it is the foundation of all their clinical skills. They see everything and they can treat any patient who walks in the door.”

Dr. Kristine Carpenter, family physician; Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs

For Moran and others who choose primary care in underserved areas, that means they are at the threshold of early diagnosis and treatment for a wide variety of problems. “Most specialists are concentrated in urban areas, meaning that in less populated places, primary care really might be the only health care around,” Moran said. “A family doctor might treat a broken ankle, deliver a baby, biopsy a mole, discuss alcohol use, adjust heart failure medications, and provide grief support, all before lunchtime,” she said.

Primary care providers must be aware of health care trends in the larger population while remaining alert for local impact in the communities they serve. One example is colon cancer which is on the rise in younger adults. About 30% of patients of typical screening age aren’t up to date on screening, many of whom come from rural or underserved populations.

“These same populations often have increased risk factors for colon cancer, which include lifestyle and diet, obesity, and smoking,” Moran said. “Family Medicine still performs about 7% of screening colonoscopies nationally, and whether I end up making that part of my practice or not, I wanted to understand the process of screening for and diagnosing colon cancer.”

Moran spent the last few months of medical school immersing herself in extra clinical experiences in gastroenterology, psychiatry, developmental pediatrics, pediatric hematology, and cardiology as preparation for being the on-ramp to care for her future patients.

“Whenever I’m on a specialty service I always like to remember that I might have been the first person to see this issue with this patient, and I would have to make the referral,” Moran said. “I love talking with experts about when referrals are appropriate, what can be done ahead of time to make the specialty visit as effective as possible, and what the specialist is going to do.”

Innovation in primary care

CI MED graduates are trained to be innovators in whatever specialty they pursue. Part of their early training focuses on quality improvement solutions – finding ways to improve patient care or outcomes by building more effective systems within health care. That mindset is especially valuable for newly minted physicians specializing in primary care. “It’s really systems engineering and systems thinking,” Carpenter said. “We’re seeing patient problems that don’t necessarily need a device or some surgical solution, but an everyday solution for chronic conditions. When our students start to think that way, they really start to think about the bigger picture and how they can treat patients better.”

Making the best use of limited resources is vital in New Mexico. The state faces a shortage of primary care physicians, and last year, US News and World Report ranked it #41 out of the 50 states in health care access.

“Primary care is begging for innovation in so many ways! I think I see myself mostly in community-level and public health innovations – how can our care be more accessible, more affordable, and more appropriate for our patients? How can our health information be shared more easily between providers? How can we prepare our health system for global changes like climate change and human migration?” Moran said. “My hope is to work on those systems and society levels to promote a healthier community, as well as healthier individuals,” she said.

Editor’s note: Zelda Moran is the 2025 recipient of the CI MED Excellence in Family Medicine award.

Moran teamed up with Shreya Rangarajan, founder of VOCA Health, to work on and pitch Rangarajan’s AI-powered app to improve monitoring for patients with vocal disorders. VOCA Health was one of six finalist teams in the 2025 Cozad New Venture Challenge.