Five Stories: Family Medicine Empowering Personal Mission
Great write up from the AAFP about my talk here! I loved being able to tell my story.
Excerpt here…
“Stepping Back, Moving Forward
Aisha Harris, M.D., who owns and practices at Harris Family Health, a direct primary care clinic, told listeners how family medicine opened the door for her to perform public health outreach and advocacy work in her hometown of Flint, Mich. — a career she traced back to being “a Girl Scout who loved innovation and exploration.”
She was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, aiming for a career in pharmaceutical engineering, when an oil company internship in New Orleans made her realize she wanted something different and led her to, as she put it, “take a step back.” At the same time, Harris had been volunteering for Project Lazarus, a nonprofit supporting people living with HIV/AIDS. Returning from New Orleans, she found herself talking a lot about that experience and wondering how to be, she said, “a catalyst.”
The answer: medicine. So she enrolled in Georgetown University’s medical school (engineering degree in hand), then decided that family medicine, with its “head-to-toe problems and generational connections,” was, she said, “exactly what I wanted to do.”
She moved back to Flint in 2020 after residency and immersed herself in patient care. Soon, however, she wondered what else she could do.
“I wake up with joy and peace, excited to have something of my own.” — Aisha Harris, M.D.
“I started thinking I needed to do more,” she said. “I was working in a chaotic place and tiptoeing around the idea that I wanted to do policy work. I felt burned out. I was taking care of people but wasn’t quite taking care of myself.
“So I stepped back again and realized I didn’t have to settle on burnout. And when I reflected on what I really wanted, the idea of opening my own clinic lingered. I dived into learning about medical business: billing systems, clinical management, absorbing what happens after I take care of my patients.”
Direct primary care, she said, “reminds me of the type of doctor I wanted to be when I entered medical school.”
Now, just seven months after opening her clinic, “every single day I am so happy for the change,” she said.
“I wake up with joy and peace, excited to have something of my own. Yes, I take care of my patients, adults and children, but I am able to write a column for a Black-owned Flint newspaper and have a podcast that addresses health disparities. I love sharing information and doing community talks.
“When you grow and change, you adapt to things you didn’t expect to be interested in. I’m a family doctor, an engineer, an advocate, a business owner. The unknown of the future is OK with me.””
