Congresswoman Yadira Caraveo, M.D. represents Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, composed of most of Adams County, a large portion of Weld County, and a portion of Larimer County. Prior to her election to Congress in 2022, Rep. Caraveo served families across the North Denver metro area as a pediatrician. As one of the few Spanish speaking pediatricians in the area, Rep. Caraveo spent nearly a decade treating families and children from Denver up to Greeley.
Rep. Caraveo grew up in Adams County, raised by her parents on her father’s construction worker’s salary and surrounded by her extended family in Brighton and Fort Lupton. Rep. Caraveo’s parents’ love for learning inspired her to work hard as a student in the Adams 12 Five Star Public School system, and to become the first in her family to graduate from college. After graduating from Regis University, Rep. Caraveo became the first in her family to attend medical school, at University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. In medical school, she decided she wanted to give back to her community by becoming a pediatrician. She completed her internship and residency at University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then moved back to Adams County.
As a pediatrician, Rep. Caraveo saw the struggles that families across the North Denver Metro area encounter every day — problems that she couldn’t fix as their doctor. Low wages, the high cost of housing, and expensive medication combined to make the American Dream that she and her family had achieved slip more and more out of reach for Colorado’s working families. One day, after getting off the phone with an insurance company that was delaying care for her patient, Rep. Caraveo decided she had had enough, and ran for the state legislature to make life better for the working families she saw in clinic every day.
In the state legislature, Rep. Caraveo worked across the aisle to take on special interests and advocate for the needs of Colorado families. When Colorado’s 8th Congressional District was drawn following the 2020 census, Rep. Caraveo decided to step up and run for Congress to fight for families from Commerce City to Greeley at the federal level.
As a pediatrician, Rep. Caraveo’s knowledge of the healthcare system helps her advocate for ways to lower healthcare costs and increase access to healthcare for Coloradans. As the daughter of immigrants, Rep. Caraveo knows how much work it takes to achieve the American Dream and is dedicated to ensuring that every child has the opportunity to pursue that dream.
Rep. Caraveo lives in Thornton, CO just 10 minutes away from her parents, who still live in her childhood home. She spends her free time with her mom and dad, her four siblings, and their children.
About Yadira Caraveo
Yadira’s parents came to Colorado from a small town in Mexico, looking for a better life. They didn’t have much education or much money, but they knew that hard work and caring for others are the values that build strong communities and family. They raised their four children with those values — on a construction worker’s pay in the Adams County home they still live in — doing whatever it took to put them on a path to success. All four were able to go to college and graduate in the span of a single generation, an incredible testament to the American Dream.
Yadira had big dreams for herself as well, knowing from an early age she wanted to help people as a doctor. She attended public schools in Adams County, received a degree from Regis University, and continued on to medical school at the University of Colorado.
Even before she finished her medical training, advocacy for others became an important part of Yadira’s life. She helped organize her fellow medical residents for better working conditions, becoming a union representative with SEIU. And she was named a Champion of Change by President Obama for her work with the Union of Concerned Scientists enlisting doctors across the country in the fight against climate change.
Yadira chose to be a pediatrician in Adams County, but with 65% of her patients’ families on Medicaid, she quickly understood that truly helping children required a lot more than what she was able to do as a doctor. Too many families she saw were falling through the cracks, struggling with job opportunities, health care costs, child care, and paying rent.
Worse, when it came to addressing these problems, Yadira saw a lot of talk out of the state legislature — but few results for those who needed them most. Determined to break through the rhetoric and replace it with action, Yadira became a state legislator and quickly gained a reputation for taking on tough fights and working with anyone to get things done.
In only one and a half terms, Yadira’s success has been remarkable, especially in such a short time: Yadira worked to pass historic legislation to force drug companies to lower the cost of prescriptions, drastically limit the toxic pollution that is endangering our kids’ health and our planet, expand funding for preschool, ensure all Coloradans have access to paid family and sick leave, and protect renters from eviction during the pandemic.
Along the way, Yadira stood up to the biggest corporate bullies and entrenched special interests: big drug and insurance companies, oil and gas CEOs, and even big tobacco.
Despite a heavy workload at the state capitol and a schedule filled with community meetings and outreach, Yadira continued to work as a pediatrician in a practice that is more like a family than a medical office. She even added extra weekend hours so she could still see her patients while the legislature was in session during the week.
Looking at Washington, Yadira feels the same sense of frustration — of all talk and little action — that drove her to run for state office. And it’s why she’s now running for Congress.
In Congress, Yadira will continue her commitment to the families she sees every day in Colorado, building on her work to lower health care costs, address the high cost of housing, combat climate change, protect a woman’s right to choose, and stop Republicans from taking away Americans’ right to vote.
Because Yadira understands how the health care system works from the inside, she’ll bring a unique perspective to health care reform, and the fight to lower drug and insurance costs and expand access to quality care.
In Congress, Yadira will be driven by the same values her parents taught her and her siblings — to work hard and always finish what you’ve started, and to jump in to help without being asked. She will fight to make loud the voices of Coloradans long ignored in Washington, particularly those of Brown, Black and Indigenous communities.
Yadira still lives in Adams County, not far from her parents, and her life is still filled with large family gatherings of relatives near and far, lots of food cooked with love and togetherness, support, and a little teasing from her brothers, and endless conversations with her sister.