the health disparities podcast

Medicine that meets people where they are: A conversation with Dr. Razia Jayman-Aristide

What would it take for health care providers to truly meet people where they are – and go beyond the 15-minute visit?

Dr. Razia Jayman-Aristide is a physician who blends deep clinical expertise with a powerful public health lens. She has spent the last 15 years building a career that bridges direct patient care, nonprofit leadership and systemic change.

In this episode, Dr. Jayman-Aristide shares her journey — and how she’s redefining what medicine, emphasizing the need for personalized care that addresses social determinants of health.

“My family was a family that came here with minimal in their pocket. We were getting food stamps. We were on WIC lines. I was going to the FQHC clinics,” she says. “I would see parents losing, you know, a day of the salary just to get me health care. It’s crazy that we don’t think about those things. And I bring that everywhere I go.”

Registration is now open for the upcoming Movement Is Life Annual Summit on Friday, November 14, 2025, in Washington, DC. This year’s theme is “Combating Health Disparities: The Power of Movement in Community.” Visit movementislifecommunity.org for more information.

 

Never miss an episode – subscribe to The Health Disparities podcast from Movement Is Life on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts

 

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

 

Dr. Razia Jayman-Aristide: One of my patients. I’ll give you an example. This guy came to me. I thought he was going to die, like in the next three months. He was such a high risk patient, one of the worst cardiac risk factor scores I’ve ever seen. And he’s, he’s but he used to smoke three packs of cigarettes a day, and now he’s down to one one pack. So I said, Oh my god, that’s amazing. Like, you’re down to one pack. Ready to quit? No, you smoke. This is what you do. Let’s talk about this. Can you do me a favor on your 18th cigarette of the day? Specifically, the cigarette at this time. Can you eat an apple? And he was like, Doc, eating an apple versus not smoking anymore? Like you’re crazy. I was like, but I need you to get some fiber in. And so I want you to swap an apple for your cigarette every day until you see me again. And he came back, and he’s like, Doc, I’m down to 16 cigarettes a day. And I was like, oh my god, that’s amazing. And he says this in front of my MA, and we’re like, what do you what happened? He’s like, I have four apples a day. Like alright, we’ll sneak one at Clementine one, you know, but it’s so simple, and it does not take an MD, right, come up with that plan. It just takes that time to listen that not all of us as providers get.

 

Hadiya Green: You’re listening to Health Disparities podcast from Movement is Life. I’m Dr. Hadiya Green Movement is life, steering committee member and founder of healthy healing community. I am so excited about today’s episode because we’re diving into the intersections of clinical care, community health and health equity with a truly inspiring guest.

 

Dr. Razia Jayman-Aristide is a physician who blends deep clinical expertise with a powerful public health lens.

She’s board certified in Internal Medicine, Obesity Medicine, Lifestyle Medicine, Menopause, and Sexual Health — and she’s spent the last 15 years building a career that bridges direct patient care, nonprofit leadership, and systemic change.

Dr. Jayman-Aristide has worked on the frontlines in community hospitals serving patients who are uninsured and undocumented. She’s held executive roles in healthcare organizations, developed women’s health and community outreach programs, and most recently, stepped away from the corporate ladder to launch a private practice focused on accessible, empowering, patient-centered care.

She joins us today to share her journey — and how she’s redefining what medicine can look like when it truly meets people where they are.

Dr. Jayman-Aristide, welcome to the Health Disparities Podcast. Thanks for being here.

 

Before we dive into our conversation with Dr. Jayman-Aristide, I want to put a plug in for our upcoming Movement Is Life annual summit.

 

This year’s theme is: “Combating Health Disparities: The Power of Movement in Community.”

 

The conference will take place in Washington DC on Friday, November 14th.

It’s an incredible event – bringing together stakeholders from diverse backgrounds to discuss healthy disparity challenges and actionable solutions.

 

Our guest, Dr. Jayman-Aristide, will be one of our plenary speakers!

 

We hope you can join us. Visit our website Movement-Is-Life-Community-dot-org for all the details.

 

Let’s get started. Dr. Jayman, I’d love for you to start us off by telling us a bit about your career path. Was there a moment in your career where you realized traditional medical training wasn’t enough to address the real life complexity your patients were facing, and what drew you specifically to internal medicine and lifestyle medicine? And if so, how do those two intersect in your practice today?

 

Jayman-Aristide: So there actually was a specific moment in time in the early part of my career where I kind of realized that there was a little bit more to just diagnosis and treatment. When I first started out of residency, I sat in a set of private practices owned by two other providers, and I started taking care of patients brand new out of residency, right? So my first job, and it was interesting, because we are taught in medical school to do this really long history of present illness, really long physical exam, really, sitting down with the patient, interviewing them, doing some motivational interviewing. And then when you have 20 patients on your Census for the day, you have to stay on time, right? Because then you can’t have somebody waiting an hour to see you. So that one hour that it takes to do all of that you’re given. Kind of 20 minutes to do. So it was a big kind of shocker from that standpoint for me, and I had to kind of take a step back and recalibrate, like, Okay, this is, this is how it is. How can I best manage these appointments? And at best, my patients getting a solid 12 to 15 minutes with me during the visit, and the fortunate patients will be able to see us like four times a year, but then that only kind of translates to 48 to 60 minutes for the entire year, right?

 

And so the majority of their health is kind of unwinding outside of that office visit, and there is no way that I can do all that interviewing and also give them the tools that they need to be healthier at the same time, right? So I started looking at, you know, in my practice, I was in a place where I had multi generational households coming to the office, so grandma, child, grandchild were all in the office at some point. And I took a step back, and I said, Okay, who’s making the decisions in the household? Who’s doing the cooking, who’s doing the groceries, who is really carrying the weight of that? It’s, you know, in a multi generational household of 10 people, it’s not all 10 people. Most of the time, there’s usually that one or two. And I worked with one family in particular, and it was grandma who was probably not even 100 pounds wet, right?

 

So grandma would walk to the bodega to pick up all of the things that she needed to cook for her family for the day. There were, I want to say, about 10 people in the family. Her children were all overweight, all diabetics, hypertensives, and the grandchildren were eight teens and above overweight, pre diabetic, and so I’m thinking grandma’s incredibly healthy, right? Grandma walks to get groceries every day. Grandma cooks every day, but grandma doesn’t really eat much of what she’s cooking when she’s done cooking it. So How is grandma not hypertensive, not diabetic, not overweight, but yet, all of the rest of the family is so I said, What if I take a little bit extra time with grandma, right? So if I’m given 15 minutes, what if I take, like, an extra five or I walk with her to the grocery store after work to kind of see what she’s buying, what she’s cooking, and give her a little bit of education that’s impactful. And so I started doing that, and I would go with grandma to the grocery store, and I would not change or ask her to change what she’s buying, but see what she’s buying and see how we can give advice on maybe healthier forms of cooking it right?

 

Because I think one of the biggest things that we do in medicine is we’re so unemphatic to cultural, cultural habits and personal habits that we Okay, don’t eat these carbs, don’t eat this, don’t eat that, don’t eat this, and you’re kind of ripping all these things away from someone. So I go with grandma. She’s buying cassava, fries it. I’m like, hey, what about a couple times a week. We steam it right, and then showing her how the plate works. Did that with her. And I gotta tell you, six months right? Six months, and you can see the difference in the family members. We were starting to see weight loss. We were starting to see, you know, be able to take patients off of medications like high blood pressure medications. And it was not just like it was the entire rest of the household. And then so when I realized, and I don’t think I realized it right away, but like, six months in, I realized that I was like, wait a minute, they’re all from the same household. This is what’s happening. Like, this is the hand that feeds the home, right? This is the person who really drives a lot of that help in the household.

 

And then I started doing that with other families. I started really identifying who that hand that feeds the home is, and spending a little bit more time with that person, and I noticed really impactful outcomes in the household. And that was that aha moment for me, and thankfully for me, it was very early in my career where we went from, you know, take an hour with a patient, but we’re only going to give you 20 minutes, right? So how can I help with that? And that was that aha moment for me. I chose internal medicine because I really didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left med school, I loved everything. The only thing I knew I didn’t want to do is work with kids, because I just couldn’t stomach it, right? Seeing sick kids, and I kind of fell into internal medicine, but I absolutely love being that generalist, because I, you know, I’m not a master of one trade. I just know a little bit about everything, and I know where to direct people, but I find that additional, you know, everything for the whole year minus that 48 minutes of your life is where, where your health is, and then really thinking about it from that lens versus this 12 minute visit for me. And so that’s kind of what drove me to stay in internal medicine and continue practicing clinically. Because I just, I love being able to figure out what. Those root causes are not just for that one individual person, but for an entire entire household.

 

Green: Thank you so much. I often would tell my students in healthcare, if you just listen to your patients, nine times out of 10, you could probably diagnose what they have and or get close to it, and that your exam would be confirming what your beliefs are based on the information they share. And being able to do that is almost impossible, like you said, when you’re going from a 15 minute block over and over again and supposed to document in between, and it seems that you have become a master of not just listening to your patients, but also hearing and seeing them. And I know you said you came to that realization pretty early on in your career, and I know you’ve also worked in community hospitals serving low income under uninsured and undocumented patients, and I wondered if you could share a similar story or realization that illustrates the systemic barriers that patients and Those circumstances face and how that actually shaped your own professional mission.

 

Jayman-Aristide: Sure, I actually have one in particular that stands out pretty significantly for me. When I was working in a hospital. I was at a hospitalist so med surg floors, see a little bit of everyone we it was a hospital, Community Hospital anchored in an area where there was a significant amount of undocumented, uninsured people, individuals who came came to that hospital. Two in particular, we had a stroke patient, young guy probably was hypertensive. Didn’t realize it, because he didn’t really get health care right, came in with a large stroke, right sided paralysis. I’m being pushed from administration to discharge him home. He lives in an attic in someone’s house where he has to pull down the stairs, and is now walking with a cane, and says to me, no problem. I can pull it down with a cane, and I can kind of wobble, you know? And I was like, No, this is not safe.

 

And so I go back and I say, you know, this is really not a safe discharge. There’s, you know, he’s going to fall coming down the stairs. He doesn’t have, you know, he didn’t have money to get a cane. So we were able to get a cane for him from a surgical supply, like, there’s a place that donates items, but I was being forced to discharge him, right? And so he’s either going to go home and fall off of these this ladder, or go home and never seek care again, because he’s kind of, you know, he doesn’t have insurance, right? So he’s not going to follow up with his blood pressure meds and his aspirin and his cholesterol meds. So that was kind of like a pivotal moment from that side to say, okay, so, like, what are we really doing here? Right? Like, I’m, yeah, yeah, I’m diagnosing him, and I’m telling him what he needs, and yeah, I’m giving him 30 days supply of medications. He’s Yeah, I set up an appointment with him at the at the FQHC, you know, at the at the clinic, and maybe he’ll show up, maybe he won’t, I’m not sure. I’m not sure if he’ll even survive or fall before his appointment.

 

And so what, what drove me with that is, is, you know, we started a community health initiative that, you know, I’d always wanted to start to, you know, do more volunteerism in the community, but you know, it’s hard. It’s difficult as a physician, a mom, like all the roles that we personally have, and also all the things that you want to do. And the community initiative we started was kind of like designed for people to come and do work in the community, but also bring your kids with you, and how can we get them volunteer hours, and how can we show them what we’re doing, but also teach the community members a little bit about how not to come to the ER, right? Like, what are the things you can do before you need to come to the ER? And it was really fascinating, because when we started it, we had about 120 members right away. Almost It was insane. Like, people want to do the good work, but they just don’t have an avenue through which to do it, or we’re doing it when, you know, they don’t have childcare. So hey, bring your kids with you, and we’ll have someone do helping them with homework while they volunteer, or they get volunteer hours, you know.

 

And it was really neat. And we’d go out into the community, like, dress in, you know, jeans and a T shirt and just be approachable. And people wouldn’t be scared to talk to us, and we would just kind of give them advice. Give them advice on the resources that were available for them, and we couldn’t fix everything. But you know, that was one instance. Another one was a bleeder. He was a GI bleeder. Was in the ER. We couldn’t find him. He ended up going into the bathroom, climbing into the ceiling. Yeah, because he was so scared that he was going to be taken away. He was undocumented and uninsured, we finally found him. He ended up running out of the ER and I find that, you know, it just sounds like situational situation at that time, but if you think about the fear that someone has, right? When you’re bleeding out of a part of your body, am I dying, but I need to be safe, right? So, like, I think that feeling of safety is something that’s very much, you know, something that we don’t really give a lot of attention to, right? It’s, it’s really, we don’t put the amount of impact on that as we should.

 

You know, a patient comes they always joke in medicine, you know, the student goes in and gets a history right, and then the patient has no medical issues. Then the resident comes in and maybe the patient remembers that they have hypertension or hyperlipidemia, then the physician comes in, and that’s like verbal diarrhea of all the different things that they have. And you know what? Actually, I do have chest pain, right? And I think a component of that is not necessarily that I’m remembering things as I keep telling you. I think there’s a component of safety that a patient must have, to have that relatability, to not be embarrassed about the things that they’re talking about, to not be embarrassed to tell you that they get all their medical information from Tiktok, right? Like we think about health disparities, and we kind of tunnel in on a set amount of patients, right? But I look at it from also, you know, you may be someone who’s well off right in life, but where, where did you grow up like? What was your upbringing like? What was your parents’ education level, like, what resources were they able to give you? Where are you currently getting your information from? Do you have time to take care of yourself? What are you doing for yourself, right? Like, there’s all these factors that come into health and safety.

 

I think setting the stage with safety is one of those. And for that patient who ran out of the ER bleeding, like he was bleeding, but I don’t want to get in trouble for being undocumented and have no insurance, so I’ll take the chance and die. You know what I’m saying? Like, I can’t even fathom feeling like that. But then I also have to take care of my health, right? And it’s, it’s like all the decisions you make for the day with that foundational fear is, it’s so impactful. I find you know. So those are my, my, my hospital based, you know stories,

 

Green: Those are two incredible stories, both addressing how you can be an advocate, even as a healthcare professional in the moment. I think a lot of times, people only think about the bigger part or the broader aspect, the sociopolitical part, and the policies, whether the policies in your hospital or policies in the state, and that seems like a whole nother job, because it is, but all are necessary. So I definitely take my hats off to you and the work that you and your most immediate colleagues have done to really pour in to the people of the community and where they are, and you mentioned both of them climbing one using his cane to pull down the attic ladder, and the other one climbing into the roof while bleeding to avoid potentially being deported. You yourself and your professional career have climbed ladders from the nonprofit medicine you’ve done so in academia and eventually became a chief medical officer. What did you hope to accomplish at those higher levels, and what did you learn about the limits of institutional change?

 

Jayman-Aristide: Yeah, so, big question. So I think, you know, I’m gonna say, you know, I’m also human. And there’s a part of me that has always wanted to climb the ladder for the sake of climbing the ladder, you know? And I’m just gonna say that, right? I think the 20 years ago, me just wanted to, like, climb it and just be that person who made those decisions. I don’t think I knew what that meant, right? As I started practicing, I really understood what that meant it, you know, like boots on the ground, I see some of the things that are happening. How can I change this? I can do minor changes, but if it’s not really coming down from above, those changes are irrelevant, right? Or I can, I can make those changes in a 12 hour shift, and then I come back next week and everything’s undone, right? My Drive as my career progressed, to climb that corporate ladder was to be in a place of impact, be in a place where I can still keep boots on the ground like that’s something I’m very passionate about, I will not take a position that does not allow me to do clinical medicine.

 

And, you know, I’m sure that’ll change at some time for me at some point. But I want to be able to kind of, you know, like, have one foot in this state and one foot in that state, you know, situation, get the best of both worlds. But absolutely, I wanted to be in a position of impact. And I find, for me, one of the best lessons My parents always, always taught me was to before I make decisions and I make assumptions, always pretend like I’m in that person’s shoes, right? And when you look at it from different lenses, every situation is so different, and I’ve been able to do that very quickly, because I’ve been taught that since I was young, right? And as a leader, I knew that I’d be able to be a little bit of a different leader, because I would, number one, have boots on the ground, but number two, I one of my and I call it for me, my superpowers is that I have that ability to look at things from several different lenses in a very short amount of time, because I’ve also lived those different lenses, right?

 

My family was a family that came here with minimal in their pocket. We were getting food stamps. We were on WIC lines. I was going to the FQHC clinics. I would see parents losing, you know, a day of the salary just to get me health care. Right? It’s crazy that we don’t think about those things. And I bring that everywhere I go, and it’s, and it’s really astounding how many leaders don’t have that lens. Because now, when I go and I introduce it, they always tend to come to me like, hey, what do you think about you know this, and it’s, it’s a neat it’s a neat skill set that I bring, but impact was the biggest driver for me, and I found, and I kept climbing it because I found in, you know, in the not for profit world I was, I was climbing it, but I can only climb it so far, because there’s a kind of pre chosen people to do things, and you’re just not looked at that way. And if you’re an academic clinician, you’re an academic clinician, right? And when I wanted to learn more about business, and then I got an opportunity to be a CMO of a private entity, a private corporation, and I thought that was amazing, because I had a lot of wiggle room to make a lot of changes and have a great impact. And I did it as much as I could, and I met some really powerful people.

 

And then I was like, wait a minute, like, that’s all it takes, is you trust me, and I can say, change these 10 things, and we’re changing it, and it was a phenomenal thing, but you could see that for some people, they don’t appreciate that as much as they should, right? If I have built trust, like the owner of the company trusted me so much, where I can say, let’s do this, and he’d say, okay, cool, let’s do it, and it would be an institutional change for everyone, and then, you know, and I knew, for me in that moment, like I would never take advantage of that, because it’s, it’s such an opportunity, and I was so fortunate to be in that place where I can do that. I just got another opportunity when I was there to work in a great public health position. And so I said, Great, a larger impact, more people that I can help. So I went for that, and then I realized for the first time ever the amount of institutional anchoring that was there, right? So get to public health, and I have the opportunity to make a lot of changes work with really high level people, but only up to so far, right?

 

So, like, here’s the glass ceiling, and here you are, and maybe you can go there, but not really, so you have to wiggle between here and there. And that’s something that I knew was out there, but I like experienced it for myself. And it would be these heartbreaking stories where I would see people in immunization clinics, and I would see people, you know, through WIC and through, you know, Mother Baby programs that we had, and it’s like I can help them, but I can only help them so much. And it, you know, for someone like me, it is mentally exhausting, because I come home thinking about all these different things that I want to do, but you can’t do it. And I was like, You know what, I can’t do this for the next five years, right? Like, I can’t do this for the next and I made a very big decision to just, you know, and especially in this current climate, like, you know, forget it.

 

And I was like, I don’t want to, you know, spend the next five, the next 10 years not being able to feel good about what I’m doing. And the commonality in every position I’ve been in is what I said to you in the beginning, the visits are 12 to 15 minutes. You have insurance. You know, if you take insurance, we have to see this amount of patients in order to make it worthwhile for the company, whether you’re not for profit or for profit, right? Like private corporation, I can only see 25 a day, but in a different setting, I might have to see 40 a day for this to be worth your while. But then I also need to figure out all the resources, like I spend a lot of time on patient portals, like sending messages to. Patients, because I don’t get that time with them. So we’re messaging constantly, constantly messaging. And you could bill for that, but the amount of time it takes me to bill for that, I’d rather be communicating with my patients, so I don’t bill for it and saying, and it’s a struggle and for someone like me.

 

And what I will tell you is, I won’t give myself a huge pat on the shoulder for anything. But what I will say is I love medicine, and I love being able to bring that information to an individual where that can potentially have an impact, not just on the patient, but their family, their grandchildren, generations. And I’ll take that, you know, time. So I left everything and I was like, You know what? I’m going to start my own private practice. I’m going to do community outreach on my own time when I want I’m going to see patients, you know? And I just, I have my practice set up a little bit different, differently. So while it’s an affordable practice, it, you know, it doesn’t solve the equation of being accessible to everyone, right it? It gives me the ability to practice medicine the way I want. Absolutely.

 

Green: Thank you so much for that I can hear your not just passion, but conviction and commitment to health of people. And I know we mentioned all the different board certifications that you have and certifications, and you are passionate about women’s health underneath that umbrella, particularly supporting busy working moms like the one you described in the matriarch of the family earlier in our conversation. So I wanted to see if we could touch on that a little bit, and then see also the weight loss management. But we’ll start with the women first you give such practical advice, and I want to ask you a two part question, but I’ll ask you just one to begin with, which is, when we think about menopause, I don’t think that people appreciate how much healthcare professionals are our physicians included, even OBGYNs around menopause are not educated in your formal training, right? How much you have to do on your own? And I wanted to ask you, why do you think menopause and midlife health and from your perspective, are still so under addressed in mainstream medicine.

 

Green: I think it’s just what you said. We’re not educated on it, you know, we’re educated on the human body and how it works. That’s it, right? So not like how it works as it ages, which is why we have geriatric, you know, geriatric sub specialists. You know, we don’t, we’re not taught about hormonal changes, which we have endocrinology. But I think even in endocrinology, like, you know, they’re a little bit more versed in hormones side of it. But most people are not going to see endocrinology. They’re coming to see their primary care physician. I think taking the time to get the additional certifications, like, I’m very big on, you know, I’m not giving you advice unless they really feel like I know what I’m talking about. And so I went and got the menopause certification so that I can know a little bit more. And then kind of opens my eyes when I’m seeing patients that there’s so many more. So I think it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s multi pronged.

 

I think it’s, we don’t get taught. I mean, I didn’t even receive an hour of anything related to menopause health in my residency training, nor my medical school, right? Like, maybe, like a couple of sides of what happens to estrogen and progesterone as we age, but the impact that it has on your brain, your eyes, your heart, your life, every part of your body. Yes, we aren’t taught that, you know, a lot of women do end up going to their physician with very vague symptoms, and, you know, they’ll check the box and the doctor will say, okay, like, you know, sleep or hydrate and you’re good. Well, your blood works perfect, but they also don’t have the support of that additional time, right? When I see a woman for a hormone health evaluation, I take one entire hour with them, and I see less patients. I don’t make as much money for the day, but, you know, I make it work one hour, and that’s just to kind of understand, like all of the symptoms, how it’s impacting her. So I think it’s the systemic inability to give us that kind of time in health care, right? There’s so many different levels to that, the educational component and the comfort component, we are not comfortable talking about things we don’t know about. Like, you know,

 

Green: I, like you, have shifted in practice from the factory mill of patients and having seven people waiting for you in the lobby to trying to do as close to one person. And it definitely does affect us as from a financial standpoint, the patients also have cost to the things that we recommend to them to do I can they actually carry out the things that we recommend? And going back to your some of your practical advice and supporting busy women and moms, how do you tailor your advice to be realistic and cost effective for that group? For example, I know you’ve given an example, like wearing wrist weights while doing errands or housework. Can you walk us through how you communicate lifestyle changes to patients who feel overwhelmed?

 

Green: Yeah. So I basically asked the patient to walk me through what a couple of their days look like, what their weekend looks like, and what a busy day looks like for them. And you know, you really wouldn’t believe the amount of things that people do. Like, we used to learn like, Oh, someone says they don’t have time to exercise their line. They have time. And I used to sit with women in their calendars and kind of try to see where or how, you know, and some of them working two to three jobs, like, really don’t have the time. And so I really sit first and I find out what your day to day looks like. I then ask you a very transparent question on what you feel like your finances are like, like, do you feel like you know you have? What is your budget for groceries look like, right? Like, how much do you spend on groceries? And when you do spend on groceries, how much? What are you buying? What are your other habits like? Do you have? Maybe I get, you know, two Starbucks once a week, and that’s $15 right there that, you know, can we think about doing something a little different with that $15 is that habit a mentally needed habit for you, though? Because then we’re not touching it, right? So, like, what do you what does your day look like? What gives you happiness and peace like?

 

You know, I go through all of that, and then I say, Okay, this is where I want to get you. I want to get you eating 30 grams of fiber, drinking half of your body weight in ounces of water. I want to get you moving. I need you to get you 150 moderate pace, you know, minutes of cardio a week, 245 minute sessions of weights. I need to get you sleeping eight hours like this is where I want to get you. And this is where you are, and this is what I think will give you the biggest bang for your buck, right? Because my thing is getting them invested in feeling better quicker, because at the end of the day, that’s what we want, right? They want to feel better. Is it that you have daily headaches? And let’s start with hydration. Your assignment for the next month is drinking water. That’s not going to cost you anything. You keep everything else the way you keep them. You do everything else. You’re doing it, but I need you to drink this amount of water, and 10 times out of 10 people will come back to me be like, Oh my God, I feel so much better, right? Because there’s so much science to hydration, you know, urinating, toxins, feeling better muscle pains and aches, right?

 

And then I say, okay, so Saturday, you spend two hours cooking in the morning. Okay, so there’s these weights on Amazon. They’re $15. Can for that week you maybe not get the Starbucks buy those weights. And while you’re cooking, you wear those weights, or you don’t have carpal tunnel, and you’re typing all day. How about you set an alarm for 11 O’clock from 11 to 12. You wear wrist weights while you’re typing. You do some bicep curls when you’re on a conference call. And I try to integrate that into their day to day. And then they waited. They’re like, Wait a minute. Actually, that’s not bad, right? And I one of my patients. I’ll give you an example. This guy came to me. I thought he was going to die like in the next three months. He was such a high risk patient, one of the worst cardiac risk factor scores I’ve ever seen. And he’s he’s, but he used to smoke three packs of cigarettes a day, and now he’s down to one pack. So I said, Oh my god, that’s amazing. Like, you’re down to one pack ready to quit. No, you smoke. This is what you do. Let’s talk about this. Can you do me a favor on your 18th cigarette of the day? Specifically the cigarette at this time. Can you eat an apple? And he was like, Doc, eating an apple versus not smoking anymore? Like you’re crazy. I was like, but I need you to get some fiber in. And so I want you to swap an apple for your cigarette every day until you see me again. And he came back, and he’s like, Doc, I’m down to 16 cigarettes a day. And I was like, oh my god, that’s amazing. And he says this in front of my MA, and we’re like, what do you how? What happened? He’s like, I have four apples a day. And it was amazing.

 

Green: Bet he’s regular too now.

 

Jayman-Aristide: Right. Like, all right, we’ll sneak one at Clementine one, you know, but it’s so simple, and it does not take an MD right to come up with that plan. It just takes that time to listen that not all of us as providers get and that’s how I incorporate those things, and I do it myself, and I will never tell you to do something as a patient. I do not practice myself, and so I wake up at 5am and I work out, and, you know, because that’s the only time I can do that, and it also helps me mentally. But I will tell you, on a busy day how I meal prep, like on a busy day, I’m, you know, I have a little chickpea salad from BJs or Costco that I throw in my lunch bag and I grab an apple, an orange, a clementine, you know, I grab my things, and here’s a two second meal prep that, let’s see if you can add that into right? So that’s how I try to do it. And people are so appreciative of doing it, and they’re not stressed out, and they’re not necessarily spending more money or allocating more time. They’re integrating it.

 

Green: I could talk to you. I know I can see for hours, not just because we’re both from New York, but the way our philosophy on health and well being and addressing disparities. So I’m going to have you wrap us up and the question I wanted to make sure we touched is it is two parts. So in the next minute or two, if you could just briefly touch on what your approach to weight management is as a practitioner that avoids stigma while helping patients achieve those meaningful outcomes, and then what would you advise future physicians to get them to a place where they’re more aware of the lived realities that their patients face, and empower them to start More of a whole person care, as opposed to the sick care model that we all were educated on.

 

Jayman-Aristide: Sure. So the first question was, I got lost after the second question,

 

Green: Sorry, yes, the first question is around your approach to weight management, and what your approach is that avoids the stigma while bringing this difficult topic to the clinic and to patients that helps them to achieve meaningful health outcomes.

 

Jayman-Aristide: As far as avoiding stigma, it’s, you know, it’s a lot easier for me than it may be for someone else, right? I am five four and 175 pounds. So I am not necessarily thin, but I talk to patients about my experience with weight and working to something that, you know, where I don’t have a lot of, you know, visceral fat component. What I do to kind of stay on the healthy side. I power lift, so I’m just like a bigger, you know, broader person. And so I talk to them about my own personal and I think that that helps with that. I also ask them how they feel about their weight, right? Like, how do you feel in your body, in your skin, when you’re walking, going up the stairs? And I, I bridge that to physiology and risk factors, because once you have risk factors that you go over. It’s undeniable, right? You can go organic as much as you want, but being 20 pounds overweight puts you at risk of 13 different kinds of cancers.

 

That is an undeniable risk that you have. So that’s how I kind of lift that stigma personal experience, in fact, right? The my approach is always what I’m not a huge fad diet person, but it’s what’s going to work for you that integrates into your lifestyle. So all of my patients, interestingly, the one, one that I saw last Thursday, he was like, What’s my next assignment? Because I see them like, every month, and I’m like, Okay, so one was hydration, one was sleep, and now it’s going to be fruits. And he was like, oh my god, I’m so excited, because I really don’t like fruits, right? So I’m he’s like, What do I do? I was like, go to the grocery store, pick out five different fruits, try them, see which ones you like, and we’ll work on something together. And so for the next and because it’s a pet peeve of his with fruits, he’s going to get a three month homework assignment, right? You’re going to work on this and see what, how to work that into your routine.

 

So I really do like these assignments. I am the physician that you don’t want to come to if you don’t want to be part of your health care, because you’re getting assignments, you’re getting homework, we’re following up, and you have to be part of your care during that process. So that’s how I address weight management. No matter what the cultural context is. We have data from solid organizations, solid studies. You know, it’s not, there was a study done with two people, and here’s the result. Like I always tell people who did the study, how many people were in it, what were the results? So we have such solid data about being a certain amount of weight, overweight, and the risk that that has for you, right? Do you want to be around for your kids and your grandkids? Like, let’s talk about these different things, right? And that’s you. That’s how I address it. As far as students go, I really, I mentor a lot of students, and I tell. To get experience, get the experience in a hospital setting. You have rotations, you’re busy, you work a lot, find some additional docs that you can go and shadow for free. That’s not part of your curriculum. Invest your own time to see what different kinds of health care there is, and never practice what you’re not willing to preach. And then go look at some stores and like prices, because we’re telling people to eat a certain way, and you need to know how much things cost, right?

 

Green: Absolutely, absolutely. It has been an amazing conversation. I’d like to thank my guest, Dr. Jayman, for joining us today. Thank you so much for sharing these incredible insights and the work that you do. That brings us to the end of another episode of the Health Disparities podcast from Movement is Life. I’m Dr. Hadiya Green, until next time, be safe and be well.