Table of Contents

Byline
By Celine Robins : Fall 2025
Title

One alum’s nontraditional path to occupational medicine

Subtitle

Jon Fields seeks to heal the body, the mind, and the community through the prevention and treatment of workplace injuries.

Sections

“The body is really like a machine in a lot of ways,” says Jon Fields (12MD, 13R, 15R). And he would know — he’s studied both at length. 

Originally from a small town in southern Minnesota, Fields came to medicine as a second career. When he graduated from engineering school at the University of Minnesota in 1996, “during the dot com boom,” he says, Fields embarked on a career with IBM. After a decade in database management and information technology, the field began to slow down. It was time to make a change.

‘Everyone comes to medicine from a different path’

His work with IBM often had him traveling around the Midwest to partner with manufacturers looking to integrate new computer technologies into their businesses. Through this experience, Fields gained an interest in industry and how to improve workers’ productivity and safety.

 At 30 years old, Fields took a leap of faith, switching careers and becoming the first in his family to pursue a health care field.

“It’s a totally different experience when you’re that age, because your focus is different,” Fields remembers. “I was there for a purpose.”

He was drawn to the University of Iowa for medical school for both its excellent educational reputation and the qualities of Iowa City itself. 

Unexpectedly, his engineering background was a great foundation for success in medicine. Fields found that, like many of his classmates who were also nontraditional students, he had a unique perspective to bring to his education.

“It’s always challenging to be a nontraditional student, but everyone comes to medicine from a different path,” Fields says. “In my class, we had people who had gone into anthropology, who had psych degrees, and people from all over. It’s cool because it helps make a field of physicians who can address all sorts of different issues.” 

Treating Iowa’s workforce

Occupational medicine allows Fields to bring together his engineering background, his interests in business and industry, and his newfound passion for patient care. 
 
“My engineering background comes into play a lot when I’m looking at the ergonomic risk factors of a manufacturing process, for example,” he says.
 
Limitations in the number of available workers have led to more injuries resulting from a worker doing a job that isn’t a good fit for them, Fields has observed. To counteract this, he has focused more of his practice, Summit Industrial Medicine, on pre-employment prevention. 
 
“I wanted to integrate occupational medicine services with a place where we can do all the work conditioning and testing,” he says. “We treat our patients like industrial athletes; some of them are lifting 100 pounds all day long. We can make sure they can do that before they start their job and hopefully avoid an injury.” 
 
Map of Iowa
Fields is also co-owner of Waverly Industrial Rehab in Waverly, Iowa, which covers many employers, primarily in manufacturing industries. With many area employers supporting John Deere, Fields helps screen employees who will be working on tractor parts, engines, and doing various types of machining. He keeps a map in the office with a pin for each new town in Iowa that a patient comes from, from Carroll to De Witt and Lime Springs to Keokuk. 
 
“We see a lot of complicated work injuries that have been going on for a while, where the person maybe isn’t progressing like we want and may have seen a lot of other providers,” Fields says. “We’ve grown consistently since we opened.” 
 
Owning his practice has allowed Fields to ideate and quickly implement new practices and process improvements, which he finds fulfilling. He also enjoys working with the Federal Aviation Administration as a senior aviation examiner, as he is also a pilot himself. 
 
“We get to tell stories to each other,” Fields says. “It’s rewarding to help pilots stay healthy and stay flying.” 
 
Though owning his own practice can create challenges in separating life and work, Fields admits, it’s meaningful to help businesses in his local community thrive. 
 
“I get to help patients get better and also help our local community at the same time,” he says. “That’s a really cool aspect of occupational medicine.”
 
He hopes that in the next few years, he can add mental health services to his suite of occupational medicine services — an aspect of work injury recovery that Fields says is under-recognized. 
 
Fields family photo
“People may have a musculoskeletal injury that gets better, but they’re still having barriers getting back to work,” Fields says. “There are a lot of reasons that aren’t physical or medical issues. So, we’re having discussions with counselors locally about setting up a back-to-work program where we could work on those barriers.” 
 
He met his wife, Nazee Jabbari (07MD, 11R) when he was in his last year of medical school. The couple loves raising their family in northeast Iowa, where they’re within a couple of hours’ drive of both of their extended families. 
 
“We quickly became invested in the community in Iowa,” Fields says. “Waverly reminds me a lot of where I grew up. It’s the same Midwest values and small-town feel. My wife and I met in Iowa and never looked back.”