North Dakota - Dr. Kurt Kooyer
Updated April 2006

Kurt Kooyer, MD is board certified in pediatrics and internal medicine and managing partner with Urgent Medicine Associates in Fargo, ND.  He also serves as the consulting medical director for Migrant Health Services, Inc, which provides medical care for migrant farm workers and their families across North Dakota and Minnesota.  He received an MD from Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and did his residency at Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids.

Prior to coming to Fargo in 2002, Dr. Kooyer practiced for eight years in the Mississippi Delta, a medically challenged area known for its endemic poverty and high teenage pregnancy and infant mortality rates.  While in Mississippi, Dr. Kooyer was the only pediatrician for nearly one hundred miles.  Along with the two other local physicians in his rural practice area, he worked hard to support a small community hospital and vital emergency room.  He also supported a program of lay home visitors for mothers and babies which targeted primarily young, economically disadvantaged women in the prenatal period, and then home visited their newborns through the toddler years.  This work not only improved the quality of life in that impoverished area, it led to a dramatic reduction in infant mortality among that very high risk population.  He also co-founded a young women's health initiative aimed at reducing teen pregnancy.

Dr. Kooyer is a frequent presenter on topics such as barriers in access to care, serving the rural poor, the role changing value systems play in modern poverty, and the consequences of an abusive tort system on healthcare in America.  Dr. Kooyer serves on the steering committee for the Section on Community Pediatrics' Rural Health Special Interest Group and is on the board of directors for the National Perinatal Association and the Red River Children’s Advocacy Center in Fargo.