Celia Hildebrand, DAOM, LAC

Dr. Hildebrand has worked in the field of health care and environmental services for more than 35 years, the majority of which have included service to Native American communities in the American Southwest. She has been involved with higher education since 2008, and she has more recently served as a faculty member, academic dean and chair of clinical education for accredited schools of East Asian medicine. In these roles, she has collaborated with interdisciplinary teams of Western and Eastern medical educators, clinicians and researchers using evidence-based practices at hospitals and community clinics.

A critical focus of her academic work at the University of Arizona is building opportunities and performance measures for interdisciplinary clinical education and practice. She maintains a private practice in Tucson and in 2018 was awarded a Fulbright specialist grant to teach an auricular acupuncture protocol for trauma, pain and addiction at the Uzhorod National University School of Medicine in Ukraine.

While in her twenties, Dr. Hildebrand began her studies in legacy and traditional medicine, in part because of her mother’s lineage from the Carpathian Mountains of Poland and Ukraine. For the past 35 years, she has worked beside, studied under and occasionally lived with indigenous and traditional healers from other countries and cultures. These experiences, combined with studies and practice of East Asian medicine, have informed and framed her clinical and academic interests in health, well-being and resiliency through lived and historical trauma.

Dr. Hildebrand's community work includes:

• Producing health services and facility master plans for six service units within the U.S. Public Health Service and Indian Health Service in the Albuquerque area, including 25 tribes, 25,000 people and 16 facilities.
• Coordinating door-to-door community health needs assessments and producing community health improvement plans for large tribal nations in the southwestern United States.
• Producing public health emergency preparedness plans, public health codes, disease investigations and infection-control protocols for tribal public health department accreditation.
• Helping to create, launch and lead the Clean Hawaii Center within the Hawaii Department of Economic Development to provide financial and technical support for emerging small recycling and composting businesses.