Dr. Benton is Professor with the UNM HSC School of Medicine, in the Dept. of Family Community Medicine. Dr. Benton received a BS in Special Education from the University of Texas El Paso in 1988 and worked as a special education teacher before entering medical school. She received her M.D. from the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio, TX in 1995 and completed her Family Medicine Residency at the University of New Mexico in 1998. She completed a Mini-Fellowship in Pediatric Developmental Disabilities at the University of Texas San Antonio and a Fellowship in Adult Developmental Medicine in Greenville, North Carolina.
Dr. Benton is the Principal Investigator/Medical Director of the Transdisciplinary Evaluation and Support Clinic (TEASC), the Adult Special Needs Clinic, the Adult Cerebral Palsy Clinic and the NM Department of Health SAFE Feeding Clinic (Supports and Assessments for Feeding and Eating). She serves as medical director of the NM DOH Developmental Disabilities Services Division (DDSD) Mortality Review Committee. She has been serving as the primary clinical consultant to the New Mexico Department of Health?s Developmental Disabilities Services Division since 2001.
Dr. Benton has focused her clinical practice on family and patient-centered care delivery for individuals with developmental/intellectual disabilities, complex special healthcare needs and adults with chronic conditions of childhood onset. Her clinical and research focus is in the area of complex care, developmental disabilities, cerebral palsy, spinal cord dysraphism/spinal cord injury, enteral feeding and atypical/nonverbal presentation of pain and illness in the patient with intellectual/developmental disabilities.
Dr. Benton is Board Certified in Family Medicine.