About Jay
An Effective Leader for Positive Change
Dr. Brown was born and raised in Des Moines. He is 61, graduated from Iowa with a math degree, went to medical school at U of Iowa, did a residency in Internal Medicine at Northwestern in Chicago. He then spent a year on the Tohono O’odham reservation in southern Arizona, along the Mexican border doing primary care. Then back to Chicago for a fellowship in Allergy Immunology. In 1994, he moved to Ames and has been at the McFarland Clinic ever since.
Shortly after joining the clinic, he founded the Ames Free Medical Clinic that ran for 17 years, utilizing over 140 volunteers and providing around 27,000 visits. This was ultimately replaced by a federally funded clinic for the underserved.
He ran and was elected to the McFarland Board during a time of great instability and worked to turn things around. The clinic has flourished since.
In 2020, the CEO of YSS, Andrew Allen (with whom he had served as a fellow YSS board member years ago) made Dr. Brown aware of an acute need that YSS had: land on which to build a new facility out in the countryside where young people who needed help could be housed and healed in a natural setting. He donated 52 acres near Cambridge to YSS, and since then around $30 million have been raised for a state of the art facility for these kids.
In April of 2023, the Iowa Medical Society gave Dr. Brown their Humanitarian Doctor of the Year award.
He is the president of the McFarland Clinic Foundation, dedicated to improving the health of our communities.
He is married to Dr. Lori Suvalsky, who is the head physician of the Mental Health Department at the VA in Des Moines. While she looks inappropriately young for him, she’s just aged better. The two of them have eight kids, and all of them are paying taxes.
His passions include guitar and cello, games in general but particularly poker (for low stakes) with a huge diversity of poker friends, swimming, and flying.
Meet Dr. Jay Brown
We have big problems, and as a doctor, I feel they have been misdiagnosed. Loyalty is a good Iowa virtue, and while loyalty to our beloved country is great, loyalty to political parties is misguided. George Washington advised against even having political parties. While I’m a Democrat, my loyalties are to the people of Iowa and the country ahead of the party.
Money and power have been concentrated in the hands of a few. Three people in this country have the combined wealth of 165,000,000 Americans. I don’t care what your party is; that can’t be ok.
Capitalism is good, but competition must be tended like a garden. We cannot allow a few aggressive plants to take over the whole garden. The inhaler I’ve prescribed thousands of times sells here for $392 and is $24 in Canada. Those are actual retail prices. That’s messed up.
Our children’s welfare is the most important determinant of our future, and their education is paramount. I want a state where every kid gets a top notch education, and can go as far in life as possible. I fear that the privatization of our schools will jeopardize that education, particularly in rural areas.
I want Iowans to make their own choices in life. Be it their medical decisions or how their land gets used, personal freedoms are central to good governance.
Our distrust and contempt for people outside our own political circle is altogether unhealthy and counterproductive. We solve our problems better as a group, than as subgroups.
While I know there are bad players in the world, the vast majority of us are kind and well meaning, considerate of the feelings of others. We Iowans need to stick together, look out for each other and continue to champion our ideals of fairness and kindness. Our politicians should reflect those values.
– Dr. Jay Brown