Expanding Access to Care

Molly (Swenson) Guy has built her career on the premise that all people, especially those who are often overlooked, deserve access to high-quality care. For more than two decades, she has worked to remove barriers for communities that fall outside the typical health care workflow, navigating constraints like geography, cost, and distrust in providers.

With an early foundation in nursing and bedside care, empathy is central to Guy’s pursuits. It’s a path that crystallized into public health during her studies at the Rollins School of Public Health.

Guy grew up in Seattle and says she cannot remember a time when she did not want to become a nurse. “I describe nursing as my calling and who I am,” she says.

Immersion in global experiences and clinical work happened early. While earning her nursing degree from St. Olaf College, Guy studied abroad in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi, where she gained firsthand insights into the complexities of health care delivery in resource limited settings. Witnessing the structural barriers that shape access to care—as well as the interconnected social and economic determinants that influence health outcomes—she was inspired by the creativity of the clinicians navigating these systems. After graduation and a two-year turn as a nurse at Mayo Clinic, Guy’s passions led her to graduate school at Emory, where she earned both a master’s in nursing and a Master of Public Health with an emphasis in global health.

During her time at Rollins, she took a deep dive into equitable access to health and health care through hands-on experience and mentorship, including thesis work in Kenya, immersion experiences in Cuba and the Bahamas, and a graduate assistantship with the Moultrie Farmworker Health Project. 

“My time at Rollins gave me the technical foundation and the systems perspective I needed,” Guy says. “It helped me think beyond a single patient encounter to the structures that shape who can access care in the first place.”

Following graduation from Rollins, Guy returned to Seattle and joined the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center’s HIV research program. As she reviewed data from partner global sites, she noticed the burden of noncommunicable diseases in many of the same communities—and how little global funding those conditions received compared to infectious diseases. That realization led her to Medtronic in Minnesota where, alongside her clinical affairs work, she joined a team that launched Medtronic Labs as a global health incubator and social business. 

Working with partners in rural Ghana and Kenya, she and her colleagues met with village chiefs, community members, and health officials to understand the challenges people with chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension face when managing their conditions day to day. They then co-developed systems that could be sustained locally even after outside teams stepped away. 

“There’s something powerful in showing up and listening, rather than coming in with a prepackaged ‘Here’s the solution,’” Guy notes. “You have to be willing to ask what’s going on and what ideas people already have, and then figure out how to help bring those ideas to life.”

She carried that same passion to PATH, a global health organization, where she worked to improve access to medications, consumables (single-use medical supplies), and management programs for noncommunicable diseases.

“I kept seeing how structural barriers kept people from getting care,” she says. “My work became about identifying those barriers and building solutions with communities, not for them.”

Today, Guy brings that perspective as a senior director of UnitedHealth Group, where her team examines how data, emerging technology, and new care models can strengthen prevention and long-term management of chronic conditions. “Technology can enable better care,” Guy notes, “but it isn’t the solution by itself. People need to understand why it matters, feel comfortable using it, and know there is someone they trust on the other side.”

She sees strong opportunities in this work for public health graduates who can translate data into clear, usable information and help design and evaluate programs alongside patients and communities.

Her advice to current Rollins students? Take advantage of learning opportunities—through fieldwork, research or student-led initiatives—and prioritize in-person connection. “Some of my biggest insights have come from informal conversations over a cup of coffee,” she notes.

Guy now lives in Minnesota with her husband, two children and a silver lab named Ingrid. She regularly lends her expertise to numerous local, national and global boards and remains closely connected to Rollins, serving on its alumni board from 2020 to 2025, including a term as president. Throughout everything, Guy’s guiding principle remains the same: to consider the patient’s experience first. That means really listening, putting people’s needs above paperwork, and consistently exploring new ways to expand access—not just locally, but worldwide. It’s a tall order. But Guy is answering it.