{"id":41170,"date":"2022-04-07T22:54:54","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T04:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-public-health-names-new-medical-officer\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:59:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:59:33","slug":"montezuma-county-public-health-names-new-medical-officer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-public-health-names-new-medical-officer\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma County Public Health names new medical officer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=4f6fa593-bf2b-5215-959d-5e6f1f5dc413&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1350\" alt=\"Dr. Amanda Mullen and Dr. Kent Aiken.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Dr. Amanda Mullen and Dr. Kent Aiken.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Courtesy Montezuma County<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Amanda Mullen was named the new Montezuma County Public Health medical officer.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s replacing Dr. Kent Aiken, who is retiring, according to a news release from the county.<\/p>\n<p>Mullen currently practices at Southwest Health System\u2019s Primary Care clinic. She joined the hospital in October, after previously completing a medical school rotation there.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI really enjoyed the community and patient population,\u201d she stated in an October news release. \u201cI am excited to work in a rural, underserved area.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her partner is also a physician for Southwest Health System.<\/p>\n<p>Mullen graduated from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in Richmond, Virginia.<\/p>\n<p>She completed her residency at Southern Colorado Family Medicine in Alamosa.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDr. Mullen is excited to work with the Montezuma County Public Health Department as they encourage residents of Montezuma County to pursue a healthy lifestyle,\u201d the Wednesday news release said.<\/p>\n<p>Mullen previously expressed her fondness for family practice \u2013 and her love for mountain biking, rock climbing and her husky, Steele.<\/p>\n<p>Aiken was a valuable resource to the county, the news release said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe has served with the utmost professionalism and has provided compassionate care to each and every one of his patients,\u201d the release said.<\/p>\n<p>With over 45 years of medical experience, Aiken spent most of his medical career in Montezuma County.<\/p>\n<p>He opened his own practice, Mancos Family Medicine, and was previously medical officer for the county before briefly moving away from the area. Upon his return, he resumed his role as the county\u2019s medical officer.<\/p>\n<p>He has worked as a hospital specialist at Southwest Memorial Hospital.<\/p>\n<p>Aiken graduated from Hahnemann University-Philadelphia medical school in 1977.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Amanda Mullen appointed amid Dr. Kent Aiken\u2019s retirement <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1347,28,61,167,1938,29,668],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-41170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-government-health-care","tag-headlines","tag-health","tag-local-news-lead","tag-medicine","tag-newsletter","tag-public-health"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84875,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41170\/revisions\/84875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41170"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=41170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}