Dr. Greg Feinsinger did not go through medical school to become a doctor and make a bunch of money. In fact, his parents put the thought in his head when he was just a kid, imparting that a common purpose people share is to help one another. Feinsinger was recently honored with the Humanitarian Award during the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Alumni Association’s annual Silver and Gold Banquet.
“Dr. Feinsinger’s career in family medicine has been marked by extraordinary contributions, including founding free clinics and championing plant-based nutrition as a cornerstone of preventive care,” read a press release.
Feinsinger’s former medical schoolmate and good friend, Dr. Steve Hessl, nominated him for the award. “Much to my surprise they gave it to me,” Feinsinger told The Sopris Sun. “Especially because I went into medicine to help people, it’s quite an honor.”
He learned the ways of Western medicine at CU, having graduated from there in 1968. After practicing for a while, he pinned some unfavorable trends within the industry. For one, that it is an industry — set on financial gain — and two that the status quo is responsive health care, rather than preventative.
“Medical school is all about pills and procedures,” Feinshinger said. “It’s not about prevention. We don’t really have a health care system. We have a disease management system.”
A little history
Born in Madison, Wisconsin to a law professor (father) and classical musician (mother), Feinsinger and his siblings visited Aspen during summers, where his family bought some land up Castle Creek Road and built a homestead there. When he was in fifth grade, they moved to the area for good. Feinsinger attended the Red Brick School House up until graduating and moved on to study political science at Oberlin College in Ohio, where he was most often found in the library, working what seemed like twice as hard to keep up with some of his classmates.
He went straight to University of Colorado School of Medicine, but left after only a few months, as it proved to be equally as, if not more, challenging than his undergraduate experience. He got the okay from the school to come back and try again in a year’s time, which he did. There, he met his wife, Kathy (Sato), who was in the nursing program.
After he finished an internship at San Joaquin General Hospital in California, the country was still in the midst of the Vietnam War; for young men that meant a likelihood of being drafted. For Feinsinger, it was the war or the Indian Health Service, a federal health program that provides free health care to Native Americans. So he worked at a clinic on the Bannock Shoshone Reservation outside of Pocatello, Idaho for two years.
Eventually, he moved back to Colorado with his family, and began a long stint at Glenwood Medical Associates.
“Back then, family docs delivered babies, took care of people in the nursing home and everybody in between — ‘cradle to grave’ so to speak,” he said.
He was with Glenwood Medical Associates for 42 years, before retiring a decade ago.
Preventative care and nutrition
It was in 2003 when Feinsinger realized that “essentially all heart attacks are preventable,” as well as other ailments. Knowing this to be true, he started the Heart Attack, Stroke and Diabetes Prevention Center at Glenwood Medical, which wrapped upon his retirement.
“Heart disease is caused by hardening the arteries,” he explained, “and that’s totally preventable and treatable and even reversible just with lifestyle changes in most cases.” He pointed out that California cardiologist Dr. Dean Ornish “proved” more than 30 years ago that people can reverse hardening of arteries with a plant-based, whole-foods diet.
The nutritional component hadn’t dawned on Feinsinger, however, when he first was addressing preventative care. About five years shy of his retirement, a nurse practitioner friend recommended that he and Sato read “The China Study” — “just about the biggest epidemiological study that’s ever been done on nutrition,” said Feinsinger.
“They found that people in China who were too poor to be able to afford to eat animal protein did not suffer and die from all of these things we suffer and die from in Western societies,” he explained.
Feinsinger added that statin drugs lower the risk for heart attack by 30%, but a plant-based, whole-food diet lowers it by 98%. “Plants are more powerful than pills,” he said.
Funny enough, during his 50th class reunion, someone on the development committee overheard Feinsinger knocking the fact that he did not learn about nutrition in medical school. From that, and after several meetings, he and Sato gave an endowment to the school to teach students that “food is medicine and prevention.” At this year’s banquet there was a plant-based option inspired by Feinsinger, according to the press release, and which he said was pretty good.
Post-retirement
Not long after retiring, he got a little bored and decided to take on a handful of patients pro bono out of a small space at the Third Street Center. It wasn’t long before Judith Alvarez, who was trained as a primary care doctor in Mexico but is unlicensed in the U.S. and, at the time, was in charge of Valley Settlement’s health outreach program, started bringing Latino patients to his door. Alvarez also asked Feinsinger to run Valley Settlement’s once-a-month Saturday clinic back then.
Eventually, he and Alvarez started La Clínica del Pueblo, The People’s Clinic, which has grown a lot since and now has a permanent home at the Third Street Center. While he is no longer the pro-bono primary provider at the clinic, Feinsinger still joins Alvarez for La Clínica’s “Shop with a Doc” offering, when he gives nutritional advice to a group of patients.
Alvarez, of course, accompanied Feinsinger and his family to the banquet.
“I really feel that if I hadn’t done the work with Latinos that I did with her that I never would have gotten the award,” Feinsinger said.