In his recent address to the American Medical Association, President Obama told the audience of doctors, “You did not enter this profession to be bean counters and paper pushers. You entered this profession to be healers. And that’s what our health care system should let you be.”
Dr. Kate Pedersen, a Dunlap native, and graduate, and now a graduate of Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, would have been standing alongside her peers applauding the acknowledgement of a doctor’s first priority: to heal.
“I know this sounds so cliché, but I became a doctor because I wanted to help people,” Pedersen said.

Ballerina to doctor
Pedersen graduated from Dunlap High School in 1999. She went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in biology and French from Grinnell College in Iowa as well as a master’s degree in free radical and radiation biology.
On May 16, Pedersen was one of 66 new physicians to graduate from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.
She recently started an internal medicine residency at the Mayo School of Graduate Medical Education in Rochester, Minn.
Her parents, Robert and Deborah Pedersen, are still residents of Dunlap where Pedersen grew up after moving from Iowa when she was 10 years old.
“It’s really like committing yourself to being a student your entire life,” Pedersen said.
Pedersen’s journey as a life-long student began when she was about 6- years-old. Someone gave her an unusual coloring book with detailed drawings of the cerebellum. Her interest was “piqued through Crayola.” Pedersen later found out this coloring book was one in a series meant to teach anatomy to children.
Of course, like most children, Pedersen went through different phases of what she wanted to be when she grew up.
“For a number of years I wanted to be a ballerina. Then, I had a passing thing with botany. I don’t know why because I am terrible with