Faculty
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT
LeAnn Jons-Cox, D.O.
Assistant Professor
LeAnn Jons-Cox, D.O. grew up on a farm in Bonesteel, South Dakota, a small town with an intriguing name that sits near the border between South Dakota and Nebraska. Her farm is so close to the border that it has a Nebraska zip code as its mailing address. Her family descended from generations of farmers who diligently worked the land to earn their living. Dr. Jons-Cox was destined, in a way, to break that tradition.
Surrounded by farm animals all of her life, Dr. Jons-Cox had, for as long as she could remember, wanted to become a veterinarian. This dream persisted until at age 11, she was convinced by her older brother that being a veterinarian was simply not an appropriate career choice for her. So Dr. Jons-Cox decided to become a physician instead.
She ultimately began her undergraduate studies at Grinnell College in Iowa, but it wasn’t until her junior year that she became certain that osteopathic medicine specifically would be her career. Her mother had been an advocate of chiropractic treatment and believed that chiropractic adjustments had cured separate ailments that had affected both her and one of Dr. Jons-Cox’s sisters. These family experiences of healing through touch and physical manipulation awakened the curiosity of Dr. Jons-Cox regarding the benefits of skeletal and muscular manipulation as treatment options and helped her to form a specific interest in osteopathic manipulative medicine (OMM).
After graduating from college, Dr. Jons-Cox spent a year at the University of Iowa Hospital where she worked extensively with newborns. This work was a transformative experience that produced her continuing interest in babies and their early childhood development.
Dr. Jons-Cox attended medical school at Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences College of Osteopathic Medicine and later had an OMM residency in Maine. She then went to work at a clinic in Omaha specializing in OMM, alternative medicine. Ultimately she felt, however, that she had a “calling” to teach and a desire to live and work in Colorado, her husband’s home state. So, after some deliberation and research, she and her family visited Colorado with the intention of establishing a medical practice in the town of Basalt. A chance meeting however with Dr. Eric Gish, Rocky Vista University’s OMM Department Chair, at the Colorado Society of Osteopathic Medicine conference in Breckenridge, changed her plans and eventually presented her with the opportunity to fulfill her desire to teach. Ultimately she and her family relocated from Omaha to Colorado in December 2008.
Today, Dr. Jons-Cox teaches OMM as a member of the RVUCOM faculty and lives on what she calls “Half Pint Farm” in Elizabeth, Colorado. There, she and her husband raise miniature goats, miniature donkeys, miniature horses, eighteen chickens, two large puppies, three cats, three bunnies and five children. As a teacher she especially enjoys those times when she is able to reach students in way that enables her to see their eyes light up in recognition that they “get it”.
Beyond being a mother, Dr. Jons-Cox, the physician, has retained her special interest in working with infants. “Babies are magic,” she said. “They are an opportunity for us to explore how and why we become who we are. They are the present that requires our immediate attention and a future that is still to be realized.”
One day, Dr. Jons-Cox would like to incorporate her love of teaching, OMM and alternative medicine into a course within the medical school curriculum.