Keisa Fallin-Bennett, MD, MPH, knew that family medicine was her ideal specialty when she found herself interested in every clinical rotation during medical school.
“I knew it was top choice – nothing convinced me otherwise,” she said. “I thought, ‘These are the people who think about medicine like I do.’”
For someone who loves holistic care, it was a great match. Dr. Fallin-Bennett became the first student to enroll in UK’s MD/MPH combined degree program and graduated from the UK College of Medicine in 2005. Ever since, she has enjoyed a fulfilling career in clinical care and education, currently serving at the UK College of Medicine as an associate professor of family and community medicine.
Dr. Fallin-Bennett’s expertise in patient-centered care led her to help start the University of Kentucky Transform Health Initiative and its LGBTQ+ Clinic in 2016. In collaboration with University Health Services, Transform Health was a way for LGBTQ+ patients to gain access to safe, compassionate care and specialized medical treatment such as gender-affirming hormone therapy and HIV PrEP medication. Patients were able to meet with doctors in a primary care setting at Turfland, where nothing distinguished them from other patients in the waiting room, and yet they knew they were walking in to see affirming providers.
Transform Health also has been instrumental in helping provide access to transgender care, combining with endocrinology for access that resulted in nearly 1,000 transgender patients seeking care through UK in fiscal year 2021.
Around the same time she helped start Transform Health, Dr. Fallin-Bennett began working with patients facing substance use disorders. Dr. Fallin-Bennett’s wife, Amanda Fallin-Bennett, PhD, works in the College of Nursing and introduced her to the obstetrics and gynecology department’s UK PATHways program, which provides multispecialty services to pregnant women coping with opioid use and other substances. Dr. Fallin-Bennett still works with post-partum women (some now nearly six years postpartum) as this program has evolved into the Supportive Mental Health and Addiction Recovery Treatment (SMART) Clinic for Parenting Women through UK’s psychiatry department. She incorporates the primary care for her Transform Health and SMART patients right into their visits.
Dr. Fallin-Bennett said that in both areas of expertise, the culture has improved. Patients feel more comfortable seeking vital medical care, and there is high demand from pre-med students, medical students, and residents to shadow in these clinics. But there is still a long way to go in restoring trust in health care.
Dr. Fallin-Bennett’s role in family and community medicine encompasses a little bit of everything, but helping create positive outcomes for LGBTQ+ patients and recovery patients is “the most rewarding thing I do.”
“You see patients who haven’t seen themselves in the mirror, and so many cry in the exam room because they didn’t expect to get treatment,” she said. “These are patients who have lost faith in the health care system, and you get to help facilitate these momentous changes in their lives.