Distinguished Service Award

Kirtly Parker Jones’ childhood was anything but typical.

The daughter of an exploration geologist, she lived on four continents before she was old enough to drive. She fished for abalone in Australia and learned to speak Spanish in Mexico.

Parker Jones and her three younger siblings didn’t collect baseball cards or Barbie dolls—they amassed animal teeth, skulls, and rocks, and helped their dad clean up mining sites at the end of assignments.

“I was always awed by the beauty of life on this planet, especially the underwater world,” Parker Jones said. “I dreamed of becoming a marine biologist until I met a wonderful teacher during my junior year of college. He shone a light on the path of medicine and I took it.”

Parker Jones went on to specialize in reproductive medicine and teach hundreds of medical students, residents, and fellows in training at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine. She is now professor emerita in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Utah, where she has had an academic appointment for 37 years.

Parker Jones is the 2020-’21 recipient of the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine Distinguished Service Award.

Named Kirtly after a “rootin’-tootin’ cowgirl” her parents knew in Montana, Parker Jones has spent most of her adult life in the American West. She met her husband, Chris, when they were undergrads at the University of Colorado. She moved to Boston in 1977 for an OB-GYN residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School, and Chris joined her two years later to attend Harvard Medical School. The couple married in 1981, the same year she began a fellowship in reproductive medicine at Brigham and Women’s, and Chris started his pediatrics residency at Massachusetts General Hospital.

In 1983, it was Chris’s turn to decide where to go next. He matched into the neurology residency program at the University of Utah, and Parker Jones was offered a faculty position in the university's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Chris later joined the neurology faculty and had a distinguished career as a sleep physician and scientist. 

Fittingly for a reproductive medicine specialist, Parker Jones arrived at the U pregnant with her son, Breck. Her career took off quickly as she built her clinical practice focusing on menopause and infertility, performed surgeries, delivered babies, conducted medical research, trained medical students, residents, and fellows, and helped establish an in-vitro fertilization program at the U of U Medical Center.

“Academic medicine is an amazing tapestry of education, research, and patient care, and I was fully engaged in it from the beginning,” Parker Jones said. “The department chair who recruited me, Dr. Jim Scott, was just incredible and did it all, so I just assumed that was the way I should be. I’ve always been kind of a can-do person; my parents taught me that if I thought I could make something happen, I could make it happen.”

Parker Jones continued to rise at the U. She served in many leadership roles, including medical director of the Fertility Center (1988-’94), chief of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology (1990-’94), and vice-chair for educational affairs for the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology (1997-2015). She published more than 50 original papers on topics such as air pollution’s effects on sperm motility and contraception for patients with psychiatric or medical disorders.

She served the broader community as well in her role as medical director for Planned Parenthood of Utah, a position she held for 17 years. Parker Jones was on Planned Parenthood’s national board for 12 years.

When asked which aspect of her career gave her the most joy, she is quick to answer: her students. “I trained several hundred medical students, residents, and fellows, some for a few weeks and others for a few years,” she said. “They learned how to take better care of women because we shared our path. They are my professional children, and I’m so proud of them.”

“Academic medicine is an amazing tapestry of education, research, and patient care, and I was fully engaged in it from the beginning.”

One of those “children” is Robert Silver, MD, who met Jones 35 years ago when he came to the U as an OB/GYN fellow. “The program was so small back then that fellows were almost like faculty members, so Kirtly and I got to know each other pretty well early on,” said Silver, who is now chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at U of U Health. “Later, when I was director of the residency program, I saw her passion for medical education in a new light. I thought of her as a mama bear back then, very protective of our residents and an incredible advocate for their well-being.”

Parker Jones notes that her success has been made possible by many people—first and foremost Chris, and also women who worked behind the scenes to support her.

“Over the years, I had administrative assistants who helped me juggle my commitments at work, and nannies and babysitters who cared for Breck and kept things going at home,” she said. “They were all amazing, and I couldn’t have accomplished all that I did without them.”

Parker Jones retired from academic medicine six years ago, although she occasionally teaches at the medical school. In recent years, she has taken on a new challenge: podcasting. She hosts “The Seven Domains of Women’s Health,” which is produced by U of U Health. Each program is about 30 minutes long and looks in-depth at the interconnectedness of physical, emotional, social, intellectual, financial, environmental, and spiritual health in a woman’s life.

Parker Jones is a natural behind the microphone, whether she’s interviewing another medical expert or bantering with her producer, Chloé. No topic is out of bounds, whether Parker Jones is discussing personal grooming, periods, or the placenta.

“You don’t want to sit next to me at a dinner party,” Parker Jones joked. “I’ll ask you anything! I love listening to people share their stories.”

Now, almost 60 years removed from her globetrotting childhood, Parker Jones’ love for the natural world is undiminished. She serves on the board for Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment and is board chair for a small literary press that publishes fiction and non-fiction books related to conservation. She and Chris are excited about being grandparents—Breck and his wife live in the Salt Lake City area and welcomed their first child this fall.

• Leigh Wilkins

A shorter version of this article appears in the print edition of UtahMed.