Dr. Yolanda Lewis-Ragland is a double-board-certified physician in pediatrics and obesity medicine, owner and CEO of Family Fitness and Wellness for Community Health, and founder of Dr. Yolanda Cares Foundation, her nonprofit organization focusing on reducing health disparities in at-risk communities at home and abroad.
For 20 years, Yolanda has lived and practiced in one of the poorest and most traumatized communities in the nation’s capital, gaining the trust and respect of residents and, more recently, actively addressing heart disease in African Americans through her annual Heart-to-Heart Red Carpet Affair that educates families about the signs and symptoms of heart disease, and introduces practical and sustainable ways for families to address the stress of systemic racism, poor health outcomes driven by social determinants of health, and unconscious bias in healthcare delivery that contribute directly to hypertension, heart attacks, strokes, and death.
Yolanda began her postdoctoral learning in public health as a PEACE CORPS health extensionist in West Africa, and completed her training at Howard University College of Medicine and Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C. She is a proud mother of three children and mentor to several youth organizations and trainees that she engages in community advocacy through her medical missions and health fairs throughout the Caribbean territories. Her most recent labor of love is a series of published writings on BIPOC healthcare workers in the pandemic, called Navigating a Triple Pandemic: Healthcare Workers of Color Confront Racism in America, Health Disparities in Medicine, and the Trauma of COVID-19.
