Hello, I'm Katie Disharoon. I am 25 years old and a third year ND student at NCNM in Portland, Oregon. I grew up in Olympia, Washington.

My undergraduate degree is in Health Psychology from Bastyr University and I intend my practice to be grounded in mind-body approaches. My current focus in clinic is in neuro- and biofeedback. I have spent this school year training in these modalities and seeing patients under Dr. Steven Sandberg-Lewis and Kayle Sandberg-Lewis; two experts in this field. Drawing from my undergraduate work, I want to incorporate counseling and effective behavioral change techniques into my practice. I believe in the healing power of nature alongside the healing power of self-efficacy and empowerment. I believe being the best doctor I can be means being reasonable and meeting my patients where they are. Homeopathy is another modality I will use in practice because I believe it elegantly blends good medicine with good counseling. I am interested in treating the whole family, with the intention of continually adding more treatment options to my tool bag. 

In residency, I aim to be an asset, both monetarily and in balancing cortisol levels, to the doctors who sponsor me to learn the art of medicine.  I am a self-starter and crave independence, but realize when I need more help from my superiors.  In addition to gaining the skills needed to provide the best medical care possible in my own practice, I hope to apply marketing and business strategies in residency. 

 My life has largely been in the Northwest.  I grew up with 5 siblings and moved around Oregon and Washington.  We moved out to the country when my mother got a job teaching in Southern Oregon and my love of animals ran amuck.  I was soon chasing after my baby goat in diapers, tending to the fences, collecting eggs, discovering more baby rabbits and so on.  I miss it quite a bit and hope to be a rural practitioner in Oregon.   

 I’m very interested in being a resident if the right position and can find each other in 2011--I’m most interested in family practice and public health.

My academic passions include botanical medicine, nutrition and philosophy, and although accurate conventional medical diagnosis is an essential skill for being the physician I want to be, I’m also strongly pulled to the concepts of physician as healer as articulated by Rachel Naomi Remen and the unity of disease and cure model underlying classic naturopathic medicine as articulated by Henry Lindlahr.  I want to be a health detective, unraveling the mystery of peoples’ pathologies, following the clues to the dark allies of morbid matter from whence they come.   I love diving into RCTs, meta-analyses and folk literature in my roles as student and student researcher.

I’ve spent a lot of wonderful and rewarding time filling leadership roles in the local and national student medical community as elaborated on in my accompanying resume.
Outside of academics, the things that shape me most are being the dad of two amazing young children and my strong pulls to social activism, history, and public health.

Marks Resume    This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it