Dr. Kristin Corbin Oja, ’11, ’14, ’15, always knew there was a better way to treat patients.
“When providers prescribe medication without understanding the root cause, we are putting a Band-Aid® on an issue,” Oja said. “The patient may feel better, and medication can prevent diseases from progressing, but we're not addressing the root cause. If we don't understand the root cause, other symptoms and diseases can occur.”
As a result, she practices functional medicine—a quality approach in treating the whole patient with a focus on health optimization and longevity.
In 2014, Oja founded STAT Wellness as a bootcamp held in a school parking lot. Five years later, she opened her brick-and-mortar facility in West Midtown Atlanta with a different business concept of combining functional medicine and movement. In January 2022, she opened the second location in historic Roswell. Now, she’s looking for a third location with hopes of growing nationwide.
When the Atlanta STAT Wellness opened its doors in 2019, Oja taught around 16 fitness classes per week, saw about eight functional medicine patients per day, started IVs, drew patients’ bloodwork, gave B12 shots and checked patients out.
Today, 85% of her time is spent seeing patients one-on-one, writing treatment plans and helping them understand the results of their lab work.
“We're very data driven,” Oja said. “So, I don't want to just tell my patients, ‘We've reduced your inflammation.’ I want to show them, ‘This was your C-reactive protein (CRP) when we first started working together. And a year later, your CRP went from 12 to two—that’s remarkable.’”
Read the rest of the Georgia College Front Page story here.
Below: Dr. Kristin Oja at STAT Wellness.
