ABOUT:

To follow Dr. Lilian White’s October presentation on using the alternative Direct Primary Care model to create her ideal family-medicine practice, the Cleveland chapter this month invites a panel of committed physicians-in-training to discuss their own plans for incorporating IM approaches and structures into their professional lives.  We’ll be hosting some of the most engaged, passionate, and articulate med students and residents we know, as they share both their individual aspirations for future practice and their visions for the future of American medicine and the health care system they’ll be navigating.

Dr. White returns to moderate the session.  As usual, we will first hear from each panelist in turn, and Dr. White will then lead the group in a free-form discussion.  In the last segment, we will field questions and comments from the virtual audience.

From our vantage point, there is nothing more inspirational than hearing the next generation of physicians or other health care practitioners discuss what most fires them up about healing, and what might be done to make it all more useful and accessible to both a personal future patient base and the community at large.   Join us for what promises to be a memorable evening of shared perspectives and lively discussion about next steps in integrative health care.

SPEAKER BIOS:

Dr. Lillian White, MD, ABFM, IFMCP, is a board-certified family medicine physician practicing from an integrative and holistic perspective, and a functional medicine practitioner certified by the Institute for Functional Medicine. Upon completing a three-year family medicine residency at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. White realized a longstanding vision for patient care by establishing a family medicine practice in Rocky River, OH that employs the Direct Primary Care model.

Dr. Olivia Dhaliwal, MD, a 2023 graduate of the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, is currently a PGY-1 at MAHEC-Boone Rural Family Medicine Residency in Western North Carolina. Passionate about whole-person, whole-life care, she plans to start a rural Direct Primary Care practice incorporating acupuncture, whole-food nutrition and supplementation, herbs, and conventional medicine, to help communities thrive.  Long a vigorous advocate for the integrative model, Dr. Dhaliwal served as an AIHM Cleveland chapter liaison with the Case student body for several years, and last year joined the chapter’s May panel discussion on the use of food as medicine in integrative practice. 

Fiona Fragomen, an M3 at CWRU med school, is passionate about integrative medicine, culinary medicine, and regenerative farming. Noting that so many surgeons don’t consider the impact of lifestyle on short- and long-term surgical outcomes, she is pursuing a career in surgery that melds her commitment to conventional surgery and other Western practices with her passion for art and holistic medicine.  Fiona sat on the Cleveland chapter’s Food as Medicine panel with Olivia Dhaliwal in May 2023, adding her perspective on the current status of nutritional science and culinary medicine in medical education, and on what steps might be taken to strengthen training in these areas. 

Serena Lee, also M3 at CWRU med school, says learning about the Direct Primary Care model has enabled her free pursuit of passions and values that align with the relational, patient-centered, preventive, personalized, and integrative approach that primary care can bring, without having to worry about the various constraints our modern health care system can impose on practice.  She is also interested in using culturally relevant Eastern medicine modalities to address disparities in Asian/Asian-American health. 

Jamie DiCicco, an M5 at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine’s combined practice and research program, is planning to practice family medicine with focuses on chronic complex illness, preventive medicine, and disease reversal. To better help her patients, she also intends to continue doing research throughout her career and to use a combination of conventional and integrative/functional medicine approaches to optimize each patient’s quality of life. 

This webinar will be of particular interest to any med student or resident either drawn to, or curious about, incorporating integrative medicine into their future career plans, as well as any physicians currently in practice who might be interested in expanding horizons. 

Med students, residents, and non-members are all welcome to attend.

Register here.