Dr. Jonathan Melk is a community pediatrician committed to eliminating health disparities in the borderlands of rural southeastern Arizona. Raised on a small family farm, he developed a keen drive to “make a positive impact” for rural people early in life. Later, public health work amongst children living in poverty in both the United States and abroad resulted in his pursuit of a medical degree from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and training as a pediatrician at Phoenix Children’s Hospital.

To master Spanish, Dr. Melk led public health and community health worker projects in Costa Rica with the intention of one day practicing in a global health environment. He was long fascinated with the US/Mexico border, and that combined with his deep interest in working with rural and medically underserved communities brought him to Cochise County, Arizona in 2006 to serve as the first pediatrician in the border community of Douglas, Arizona with the not-for-profit Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), Chiricahua Community Health Centers, Inc. (CCHCI) (www.cchci.org).

He quickly became captured by the comprehensive, community-based, mission-driven healthcare provided to all people regardless of ability to pay made possible by the FQHC healthcare model embodied by CCHCI. He became Director of Community Pediatrics in 2008, then Chief Medical Officer in 2012.

Beginning in 2014, he assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer and is honored to lead a team of highly capable, motivated professionals who are dedicated to the health and well-being of the people of Cochise County (a service area the size of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined). Since 2014, CCHCI has grown rapidly from an approximately $13 million budget to $65 million budget (FY25) staffed with ~80 providers and ~465 employees. Dr. Melk’s primary strategy to overcome the significant challenges faced by Chiricahua has been to recruit a team of professionals with experience and commitment unheard of in many other under resourced rural and board regions.