A Life in Public Service

Governor Janet Mills, the Governor of Maine and a former Maine Attorney General, joins Dr. Lisa Belisle and Dr. Jeff Barkin for a wide-ranging conversation about a life in public service. A Farmington native, she traces the path that took her from a year at Colby College and travels as a young woman to law school at the University of Maine and a career prosecuting cases, eventually becoming one of New England's early woman district attorneys. She reflects on early role models, including her parents and the Maine senator Margaret Chase Smith, whose example shaped her sense of conscience and leadership.

The discussion turns to what governing Maine looks like from the inside, in the nation's oldest and one of its most rural states. Mills describes the realities of budget decisions affecting hospitals, MaineCare, and rural communities where a hospital anchors the whole town. She and the co-hosts examine the strain on rural maternity care, the challenge of attracting primary care physicians who carry heavy student debt, and the role of team-based care, community paramedicine, and expanded scope of practice for nurse practitioners.

Drawing on her clinical and policy perspectives, the conversation also considers how to train and retain physicians through programs like the Tufts Maine Track, how administrative costs and drug pricing shape what patients pay, and what shared responsibility between states and the federal government might look like. Throughout, Mills speaks about the convictions that keep her in public life and the people she sees herself serving. The episode offers listeners a closer look at a Maine leader beyond the headlines.