Beyond the Bend

Jenna Murray’s path to medical school wasn’t winding—at first. The subject of the fourth film in University of Utah Health’s New Narratives in Health, Winding Path, Murray said she knew as a young girl that she wanted to pursue medicine—from the moment she helped her late grandfather Larry Murray suture a horse’s wound closed.

“When it came to tie the knots, my grandpa’s fingers were a bit too large, and he asked me to finish the job,” Murray said in the film. “I think I kind of shocked him at how excited I was—this little kid with bloody fingers … He was grinning from ear to ear. I remember he told my dad with wide, sparkling eyes, ‘our little girl is going to be a surgeon one day.’”

Murray’s grandfather was an Eastern Shoshone man who, Murray said, did a lot for his tribe. He was a teacher and a football coach; he also worked in economic development.

To Murray, he was Papa—a cowboy through and through—who welcomed her from Las Vegas every summer to the Wind River Indian Reservation. There, Murray would trade her city life to connect with both her family and her heritage.

In Winding Path, Murray shares details on how, as a teenager, she became immersed in her social life, spending less time on Wind River as her schedule filled up with the demands of preparing for college, competing on cheer teams, and developing friend-ships. When Jenna was 16, her grandfather was out in his barn, tacking up a horse. He suffered a minor heart attack, and Murray’s grandmother performed CPR for over 40 minutes as she waited for emergency services to arrive.

He was transferred to Casper, Wyoming, to the hospital. By then it was too late,” Murray said in Winding Path. “I lost him sooner than I should have. My grandfather’s heart attack was fairly minor. Had that happened in the city, he probably could have survived. The treaties that we entered in the late1800s promised health care, and we don’t have that. It’s almost like you have to choose between having that access and remaining on your tribal lands.”

“I lost him sooner than I should have. My grandfather’s heart attack was fairly minor. Had that happened in the city, he probably could have survived.”

After graduating high school in 2013, Murray attended Colorado College on a pre-med track. A straight-A student, she was later accepted into a one-year accelerated Master of Public Health (MPH) program at Dartmouth College, where she set out to explore research while preparing for medical school. 

Home, Murray said, is where she began to chart a new course for herself––one that began with following the advice of her native therapist who suggested she return to wind river. Murray took her advice. 

Then the twists and turns began. “I thought I was doing all the right things, but [my] drinking got out of control—to the point where I couldn’t even make it to class,” Murray said in the film. “About halfway through, I was asked to leave the program. I got sent back home, and I was devastated.” 

Home, Murray said, is where she began to chart a new course for herself—one that began with following the advice of her Native therapist who suggested she return to Wind River. Murray took her advice. Back on the land that was so meaningful to her grandfather, she began to heal, and she began to revisit her childhood dreams of pursuing medicine. Only now, Murray had a vested interest in research—a seed that had been planted through her participation in the University of Utah’s Native American Research Internship (NARI) program as an undergrad.

Murray traveled to Salt Lake City in the summer of 2015 to live on the U’s campus for 10 weeks. As a NARI intern, she was connected to a cultural mentor who provided guidance throughout her time in the program, both in helping her navigate the world of research and in providing opportunities to connect with program participants in spaces that allowed them to honor their cultural heritage. Murray loved the program so much that she returned in the summer of 2016, this time pivoting to clinical research after discovering the lab was not for her.

“NARI was really unique at that time because most programs only did bench science, where you’d be pipet-ting and doing experiments,” Murray recalled. “But I loved clinical research. I got to meet with patients, and I learned to draw blood and did things like process samples in a kidney lab. The research was really great.”

And the support of her cultural mentors both during and after her participation in the program proved to be life changing.

“I really relied on my cultural mentors, and I’ve stayed in contact with them,” Murray said. “They helped me get through a lot of hard things.”

In 2019, Murray was permitted to rejoin the Dartmouth MPH program; and, in May 2021, she celebrated the completion of her master’s degree in public health. Murray’s personal journey through recovery inspired her to continue community-based and focused research, something she developed a passion for while working with the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the NIH as a grad student at Dartmouth. But medicine was still calling her—so she called her NARI mentors.

Murray’s mentors encouraged her to go after her dreams, and they invited her to return to the NARI program as a mentor. In this capacity, she could channel her experiences to help others in the pro-gram find their own path while she forged ahead into a promising future—one that would find her in pursuit of both an MD and a PhD.

She accepted.

Murray is in her third year as a NARI mentor while completing her MD degree and a PhD in research in the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine. She is considering a residency in obstetrics and gynecology, with the goal of using her medical education to pro-vide health care in tribal communities, like her grand-father’s beloved Wind River, where access to health services is limited. She is also exploring ways to continue her research studying substance use in pregnant Native women—and plans to stay connected to her NARI cultural mentors and mentees no matter which way her path unfolds.

“The thing that I really love about NARI is that it is an exposure program. We’re here to show you your options in health care. There are no expectations—no requirement—that you go into medicine.” 

“The thing that I really love about NARI is that itis an exposure program. We’re here to show you your options in health care. There are no expectations—no requirement—that you go into medicine,” Murray said. “You need at least two years of undergraduate education to participate in NARI, but it doesn’t matter the area of study or when the education took place. It doesn’t matter how much or how little science exposure you’ve had. We recognize that, like me, not everybody’s journey is linear. You’re going to find community—and we are all here to support each other.”

Learn more about the U of U Health New Narratives in Health film, Winding Path.