Dr. Christiansen graduated from Woman’s Medical College in 1955 (now Drexel College of Medicine) in Philadelphia. She completed her internship at White Cross Hospital in Columbus Ohio in 1956 and was a general practitioner in Granville, Ohio from 1956 to 1959. She moved to Denver in 1959 and worked part time for Denver Health in inner city maternal and child health clinics for five years. When her children started school, she became a primary care physician at the University of Denver Student Health Service. Denver University (D.U.)  implemented a universal health care program for all students in 1947 because they didn’t want any student to drop out because of unexpected medical bills. Dr. Christiansen says, “It was a joy to work where all students had full medical coverage. It was simple and inexpensive.” Dr. Christiansen was the medical director the last nine years at DU and retired in 1985.

From 1990 to 1992 Dr Christiansen was the Medical Director of two rural clinics in the underserved mountain area west of Denver. The two clinics, one in Black Hawk and the other in Nederland, served 22,000 patents. Only 20% were covered with Medicaid or Medicare, 10% were covered with commercial insurance and the remaining 70% were uninsured. Although by law the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center is the catchment for uninsured patients outside of Denver, the University Hospital did not want to treat uninsured patients. Dr. Christiansen says, “It was heart breaking to see many of our patients die because they could not access specialty care and hospital care.”

Dr Christiansen was the national President of the American Medical Women’s Association in 2002-2003. She has been a member of the Physicians for a National Health Program for thirty years. In 2002, she helped establish Health Care for All Colorado. In 2004, she established the Health Care for All Colorado Foundation.