Called to serve: NTU grad’s path to health care begins close to home
Special to the Times | Donovan Quintero
Tia Julian Bia poses for graduation photos Monday at Tseyi Overlook at Canyon de Chelly National Monument. Bia and 11 classmates will graduate Friday from Navajo Technical University with certified nursing assistant certificates.
CHINLE
Tia Julian Bia did not always picture herself in scrubs.
The Valley Store, Arizona, native said she began to understand the depth of medical need on the Navajo Nation after watching her young niece, who was born with complications and depends on a tracheostomy, travel far from home for care unavailable near their family.
Her niece has now passed her third birthday, outliving the one-year life expectancy doctors first gave her. Bia and 11 classmates will graduate Friday, May 15, from Navajo Technical University with certified nursing assistant certificates.
Bia said the yearlong, full-time CNA program is the first step in a longer plan. She intends to apply for a job at Chinle Comprehensive Health Care Facility or Sage Memorial Hospital in Ganado. She also plans to return to NTU for a pharmacy technician program.
She said her family’s repeated trips for her niece’s care have come with costs, including fuel, lodging, missed work and the strain of traveling long distances.
“It’s a lot on my family,” Bia said Monday while her sister, Skyler Nelson, and boyfriend, Sheldon Benally, helped take her graduation photographs at Tseyi Overlook at Canyon de Chelly National Monument.
To read the full article, please see the May 14, 2026, edition of the Navajo Times.
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