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Dr. Dunbar is double-boarded in Family Medicine and Lifestyle Medicine with fellowship training in Sports Medicine. She entered medicine as a second career after spending a decade as a Project Manager in commercial and retail construction.
Medicine has and continues to be the way she honors her sister and mother—both of whom died too early and before they met her family. Unfortunately, she was suffering in the traditional healthcare system—with 15-minute visits that didn’t allow her to connect with and develop meaningful relationships with her patients. With the support of her family, she made the decision to start her own private practice.
Dr. Dunbar founded Saravit Direct Health, a preventive direct primary care practice. She takes the time to educate and support her patients as they create health, improve their well-being, and increase their longevity. Her patients experience firsthand that centering their lives around the pillars of Lifestyle Medicine is foundational to achieving and maintaining health, longevity, and vitality.
You studied architecture and urban planning and then came back to school 13 years later to become a doctor. Why?
Dr. Siatta Dunbar: My family immigrated to the U.S. when I was 8 years old because we were fleeing a civil war back home in Monrovia, Liberia. As I was growing up in the States, I vividly remember being fascinated by ambulances—my family even called me an “ambulance chaser.” However, my thinking and dreams of what I was capable of were pretty limited—I never thought I would be capable of becoming a physician. Unfortunately, it took the death of my sister, from metastatic breast cancer at 31 years old, to bring me one step closer to medicine. After she died, I started to volunteer for my local fire and rescue squad. My mother was less than pleased by this—she went to finishing school in Switzerland—so the thought of her daughter sleeping in a firehouse was mortifying. I worked as a construction project manager during the day and was content with volunteering at night or on weekends.
Almost four years to the day after my sister died, I got a terrifying call early Saturday morning from my mother’s husband—he was crying and, with a shaky voice, said he had found my mother on the bathroom floor and that there was an ambulance at their house. She had retired the day before and had plans to open a bed and breakfast in South Carolina, but sadly woke up that morning and had a fatal heart attack. Her death, before she was able to live out her dream, taught me that tomorrow is not promised to anyone. Those losses, along with a lot of encouragement from my brother, Stephen, gave me the faith and belief that I should stop living small and apply to the post-baccalaureate program at Rutgers University. That’s where I started my medical education and came full circle by completing my Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship at Rutgers University 11 years later.
What first appealed to you about the DPC model?
Dr. Siatta Dunbar: While completing my family medicine residency, I remember ruminating over the idea of having my own practice. The further along I got into my training and once I started working as a hospital-employed sports medicine physician, I quickly learned that I wasn’t delivering healthcare—I was doing disease management. The very reason I wanted to become a doctor was to save others the heartache of losing loved ones like I had, and disease management doesn’t do that. I also learned very quickly that 15 minutes every 6 months doesn’t create the kind of trusting relationship needed to help patients reverse disease and live a high-quality life.
One of the biggest reasons I started my own DPC practice is for TIME—time to get to know my patients and their families, time to build a trusting relationship, time to learn their vision for their health, time to educate about lifestyle, and time to support my patients as they modify their choices to create health, reverse disease, and live with vitality.
What are the best and worst things about your job?
Dr. Siatta Dunbar: The best thing is the autonomy—I set my scope of services, my schedule, my systems. I set the values and mission for my practice, Saravit Direct Health, and if something isn’t in line with that, I can change it.
The worst thing is I haven’t solved the health equity piece, YET. I know the comfort and ease I feel when I see a physician who is also Black, and my patients have shared that they feel similarly. In my mind, there are two issues to solve:
- Greater access to high-quality care within the DPC model for those marginalized by our current healthcare system.
- Opening the door for more physicians who identify as BIPOC.
I’ve got ideas to address both of these—stay tuned!
What misconceptions about lifestyle medicine would you like to clear up?
Dr. Siatta Dunbar: When I talk to my patients about lifestyle medicine, some are skeptical. Initially, they don’t believe that their lifestyle can truly reverse disease, lower their risk of certain cancers, or that my recommendations are evidence-based. One major reason is social media—which can be wonderful and powerful, but when it comes to nutrition, it is our collective downfall. Unfortunately, the person with the biggest social media following is often the one people believe. If that person says you should eat an all-meat diet, that meat is the only way you can get enough protein, or that eggs are great for you, or that you’ll end up vitamin deficient on a plant-based diet, then consumers of social media believe this to be true. So when I give them recommendations that contradict what they’ve heard on social media, some look at me like I have three heads! Additionally, there is so much focus on diet and exercise, and most people think that’s all there is to lifestyle medicine. But in fact, there is so much more than just “eat right and exercise.”
Who else in healthcare inspires you, and why?
Dr. Siatta Dunbar: All the other physicians, health plan providers, benefit advisors, and tech companies that are choosing to go against the status quo of insurance-driven healthcare. They are brave, relentless in their pursuit, and are the most collaborative group of individuals that I have the pleasure of knowing and working with. These are the people that are redesigning healthcare and putting patients at the center, in control of their health—where they belong!
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