Sanford Bemidji to host Native Americans with Stethoscopes event

Sanford Health of Bemidji is bringing back Native Americans with Stethoscopes on June 20, a free career-exploration program designed to pull Native and other students toward health care in a region where staffing, trust and representation all matter. The half-day event will run from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Sanford Bemidji Medical Center, with check-in beginning at 9:45 a.m.

Sanford’s flyer says the program is open to students in grades 7 through 12 and to all students interested in exploring a career in medicine. That makes the event more than a ceremonial outreach stop: it is part of Sanford’s effort to build a future workforce for one of Beltrami County’s biggest health systems.

That workforce question is not abstract in Bemidji. Sanford Bemidji Medical Center, founded in 1898, says it handles more than 6,000 admissions and about 800 births each year, while its emergency department treats nearly 30,000 patients annually. In a hospital with that kind of daily volume, the pipeline of future nurses, technicians, therapists and physicians can shape how quickly care is delivered and how well the staff reflects the people it serves.

The 2026 event follows Sanford’s inaugural Native Americans with Stethoscopes camp in 2024, when five high-schoolers took part in hands-on simulations that included suturing wounds, delivering a baby and casting an arm. That first camp was framed as a way to give students a fuller look at health careers and to encourage greater representation of Native Americans in the field.

Sanford says the program fits within Aspire by Sanford, its student-career pipeline aimed at connecting young people with health professionals across the system. The model was inspired by Hennepin Healthcare’s American Indian Youth with Stethoscopes Youth Summit, which has drawn youth from the Bemidji area, White Earth, Red Lake, Wisconsin and North Dakota, with about 30 tribal affiliations represented among registrants.

In Bemidji, the outreach also lands close to home. Rebekah Fineday, Sanford Health’s Native American community advocate, is an enrolled member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, a registered nurse and a veteran who worked in Indian Health Service in Cass Lake and Red Lake for more than a decade. Sanford says she helps address health disparities and strengthen relationships with tribal health groups, a role that has become part of the hospital’s broader effort to build trust. Sanford Bemidji’s 20th annual Niimi'idiwin powwow in 2025, held with Red Lake and Cass Lake Indian Health Services, showed how closely the hospital has tied health care to Ojibwe cultural connection.