Medicine Wheel Consulting was launched in 2009 to address the disparities in cancer prevention and control experienced by American Indian and Alaska Native populations. 

Our Director is David Perdue MD MSPH. Dr. Perdue is a registered citizen of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, and is one of only two American Indian gastroenterologists in the U.S.   He competed his Masters in Public Health at the University of Colorado Health Science Center in 1999.  He then attended medical school at the University of Washington where he completed the American Indian Health track.  This experience included fellowships with the CDC’s Arctic Investigation Program (located at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, AK), and with the Seattle Indian Health Board where he spent 3 months traveling with their traditional healer.

Dr Perdue joined the medical school faculty of the University of Minnesota in 2006 after completing internal medicine residency and a gastroenterology fellowship.  That summer he competed the National Cancer Institute Summer Course in Cancer Prevention and Control, after which he returned to Minnesota and helped form the Minnesota Intertribal Colorectal Cancer Council.

In 2008 Dr Perdue left the University to pursue private clinical medicine and start Medicine Wheel Consulting, as well as the American Indian Cancer Foundation. Last year Dr Perdue complete the Native Investigators program, a 2-year intensive research post-doctorate program jointly managed by the University of Washington’s Native People for Cancer Control and the University of Colorado’s Native Elder Research Center.

Dr Perdue has published many articles in peer-reviewed journals. He was lead author on what continues to be the most authoritative work on colorectal cancer incidence in American Indians and Alaska Natives published in the journal Cancer in 2008.

Click here to review Dr. Perdue's curriculum vitae.