Dr. Julie Lyons is a fourth-generation physician who grew up in rural Massachusetts and made her way out west after attending Brown University. Initially landing in Jackson, WY, she spent several years pursuing a passion of skiing and teaching skiing to persons with disabilities. This led her to become a middle and high school science teacher in rural Oregon, where she developed a health and anatomy curriculum for the school. Learning about the human body and its intricacies was fascinating and spurred her on to apply to medical school. After gaining clinical experience as a medical assistant at Planned Parenthood, she attended Oregon Health Sciences University and fell in love with the womb to tomb aspect of family medicine.
Eager to get back to the mountains and settle in a rural area, she chose Full Circle Health in Boise (formerly the Family Medicine Residency of Idaho) for her residency training. She accepted a full spectrum rural medicine position at a critical access hospital in Blaine County, Idaho and practiced there for 15 years before deciding she needed a career change. She took a sabbatical with her husband, traveled around the southern hemisphere of the world, and home schooled her two boys for a year before joining the faculty at Full Circle Health in Nampa, under the leadership of her former mentor Dr. Kim Stutzman.
Dr Lyons works part-time as a faculty member and continues to work as a hospitalist at critical access hospitals in the west. When she is not working, she is busy playing in the mountains on her skis or bike, trying to keep up with her boys, or advocating for better health equity in Idaho. She is eager to train the next generation of Idaho’s physicians, full a true full circle experience.