Ariana Thompson-Lastad

Assistant Professor of Family and Community Medicine, University of California, San Francisco

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About Ariana

Thompson-Lastad's research focuses on health care delivery; health equity; and integrative medicine. As a medical sociologist; she uses mixed-methods and qualitative approaches to understand how integrative medicine and other health care interventions can help advance health equity. Overarching themes in Thompson-Lastad's writing include the implementation of multi-modal health care interventions for vulnerable patients; and understanding how social and structural conditions shape health care practice. Thompson-Lastad serves as a trainer with the Bay Area Structural Competency Working Group; a member of the national steering committee for Hand in Hand; which collaborates with the National Domestic Workers Alliance; and co-chair of Integrative Medicine for the Underserved's equity; diversity and inclusion committee.

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

Improving Chronic Pain Care through Integrative Medicine

Memo, February 2020

Publications

"Addressing Food Insecurity and Chronic Conditions in Community Health Centres: Protocol of a Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of Recipe4Health" (with Ariana Thompson-Lastad, Lisa G Rosas, Steven Chen, Lan Xiao, Benjamin O Emmert-Aronson, Elliot Ng, Erica Martinez, Mike Baiocchi, Elizabeth A Markle, and June Tester). BMJ Open 13, no. 4 (forthcoming).

Discusses community health centers are increasingly implementing ‘Food as Medicine’ programs to address the dual challenge of chronic conditions and food insecurity. Concludes the goal of this quasi-experimental study was to evaluate the effectiveness of Recipe4Health, a ‘Food as Medicine’ program using a scientifically rigorous method.

"Housing Is Health Care”: Treating Homelessness in Safety‐net Hospitals" (with Christoph Hanssmann, Janet K. Shim, Irene H. Yen, Mark D. Fleming, Meredith Van Natta, Maryani Palupy Rasidjan, and Nancy J. Burke). Medical Anthropology Quarterly 36, no. 1 (2022): 44 - 63.

Discusses how health workers in two U.S. urban safety‐net hospitals worked with patients without stable housing.

"Integrative Group Medical Visits: A National Scoping Survey of Safety-Net Clinics" (with Paula Gardiner and Maria T. Chao). Health Equity 3, no. 1 (2019): 1-8.

Conducts a scoping survey of clinicians around the US who combine group medical visit and integrative medicine approaches in their work. Finds that these programs have been implemented in safety-net settings in at least 11 states.

"Group Medical Visits as Participatory Care in Community Health Centers" Qualitative Health Research 28, no. 7 (June 2018): 1065-1076.

Examines group medical visits, a clinic-based intervention that aims to improve patient health by combining clinical care, health education and peer support. Suggests, using qualitative data, that group visits can restructure patient-provider encounters to interrupt healthcare inequalities.

"Defining Trauma in Complex Care Management: Safety-Net Providers’ Perspectives on Structural Vulnerability and Time" (with Mark D. Fleming, Irene H. Yen, Meredith Van Natta, Sara Rubin, Janet K. Shim, and Nancy J. Burke). Social Science Medicine 186 (August 2017): 104-112.

Draws on longitudinal data from two complex care management programs that serve "high-utilizer" patients at safety-net hospitals. Discusses how interprofessional provider teams understand and respond to patients' trauma.