Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Close to Home — What it’s like on the street where you live
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Haven Headache & Migraine Center: Millions live with migraine, so why is care still so outdated?
When most people think of poorly understood health conditions, their minds don’t necessarily jump to migraine. However, as countless people who live with migraine can tell you, finding care (and sometimes just feeling understood) can be a challenge. Haven Headache & Migraine Center is trying to change that.
Migraine impacts more than a billion people around the globe. Given that fact, you might wonder why so many people experience significant barriers to care. Izac Ross, Haven’s founder and CEO, had chronic migraine from the age of 2 and understands the struggle. Even after receiving some of the best possible care at UCSF, Stanford, Weill Cornell, UCLA, and Johns Hopkins, he notes, “None of these places ever truly met my needs for care between visits.”
Ross shares that there are several reasons why people living with migraine have historically been underserved. “It comes down to a combination of stigma, funding, and structural neglect,” he explains. “Migraine is the second-leading cause of years lived with disability worldwide, and the leading cause in young women. Yet for decades, migraine attacks were dismissed as ‘just headaches’ or treated as a lifestyle complaint rather than a serious neurological condition.”
“Research funding has been chronically disproportionate to the disease burden. And within medicine, headache neurology has historically received limited emphasis in many training programs,” Ross continues. “You can’t fix care delivery if you haven’t invested in the people who deliver care.”
That doesn’t mean no progress has been made, and Ross says there’s hope for people living with migraine today. “We’re at an inflection point now. Better medications exist, and understanding of the disease has improved, but the clinical infrastructure needs to catch up.”
Ross started Haven Headache & Migraine Center in an effort to work toward that improved infrastructure. Many individuals with migraine have to spend years locating a specialist or even just finding a general practitioner who takes their concerns seriously.
Haven uses a telehealth-first model that allows patients to connect with a migraine specialist from the beginning. Specialists know that migraine can manifest differently in different patients, so the focus is on developing a personalized care plan.
Haven’s clinicians can connect patients in their care with a range of evidence-based treatments, including preventive and acute medications, naturopathic supplements,, and even migraine treatment devices. In some areas, clinicians offer referrals for in-office procedures like nerve blocks or Botox for chronic migraine.
For many patients, treatment requires a multimodal approach. If needed, they can access behavioral health and lifestyle coaching to help prevent and treat symptoms.
“The future of patient-centered specialty care looks like what Haven is trying to build,” Ross says. “It’s a clinic where the care is genuinely expert, where access isn’t a six-month ordeal, where patients feel heard, and where their care plan evolves over time rather than them being handed a prescription and shown the door.”
“The future belongs to clinics that go very deep on one thing, that have the clinical depth to handle the full spectrum of severity, from episodic to chronic to refractory, and also to clinics that invest in the clinical protocols and outcomes tracking to keep getting better,” he adds.
To some, “patient-centered care” might sound more like a buzzword than a meaningful commitment. That may be the case for some clinics, but at Haven Headache & Migraine Center, it’s an integral part of the mission.
“Patient-centered care isn’t a marketing concept. It means the clinic is actually structured around the patient’s journey,” Ross says. “Every decision about how Haven operates comes back to that.”
Here's something you might be interested in.
Haven Headache & Migraine Center: Millions live with migraine, so why is care still so outdated?
Haven Headache & Migraine Center: Millions live with migraine, so why is care still so outdated?
When most people think of poorly understood health conditions, their minds don’t necessarily jump to migraine. However, as countless people who live with migraine can tell you, finding care (and sometimes just feeling understood) can be a challenge. Haven Headache & Migraine Center is trying to change that.
Migraine impacts more than a billion people around the globe. Given that fact, you might wonder why so many people experience significant barriers to care. Izac Ross, Haven’s founder and CEO, had chronic migraine from the age of 2 and understands the struggle. Even after receiving some of the best possible care at UCSF, Stanford, Weill Cornell, UCLA, and Johns Hopkins, he notes, “None of these places ever truly met my needs for care between visits.”
Ross shares that there are several reasons why people living with migraine have historically been underserved. “It comes down to a combination of stigma, funding, and structural neglect,” he explains. “Migraine is the second-leading cause of years lived with disability worldwide, and the leading cause in young women. Yet for decades, migraine attacks were dismissed as ‘just headaches’ or treated as a lifestyle complaint rather than a serious neurological condition.”
“Research funding has been chronically disproportionate to the disease burden. And within medicine, headache neurology has historically received limited emphasis in many training programs,” Ross continues. “You can’t fix care delivery if you haven’t invested in the people who deliver care.”
That doesn’t mean no progress has been made, and Ross says there’s hope for people living with migraine today. “We’re at an inflection point now. Better medications exist, and understanding of the disease has improved, but the clinical infrastructure needs to catch up.”
Ross started Haven Headache & Migraine Center in an effort to work toward that improved infrastructure. Many individuals with migraine have to spend years locating a specialist or even just finding a general practitioner who takes their concerns seriously.
Haven uses a telehealth-first model that allows patients to connect with a migraine specialist from the beginning. Specialists know that migraine can manifest differently in different patients, so the focus is on developing a personalized care plan.
Haven’s clinicians can connect patients in their care with a range of evidence-based treatments, including preventive and acute medications, naturopathic supplements,, and even migraine treatment devices. In some areas, clinicians offer referrals for in-office procedures like nerve blocks or Botox for chronic migraine.
For many patients, treatment requires a multimodal approach. If needed, they can access behavioral health and lifestyle coaching to help prevent and treat symptoms.
“The future of patient-centered specialty care looks like what Haven is trying to build,” Ross says. “It’s a clinic where the care is genuinely expert, where access isn’t a six-month ordeal, where patients feel heard, and where their care plan evolves over time rather than them being handed a prescription and shown the door.”
“The future belongs to clinics that go very deep on one thing, that have the clinical depth to handle the full spectrum of severity, from episodic to chronic to refractory, and also to clinics that invest in the clinical protocols and outcomes tracking to keep getting better,” he adds.
To some, “patient-centered care” might sound more like a buzzword than a meaningful commitment. That may be the case for some clinics, but at Haven Headache & Migraine Center, it’s an integral part of the mission.
“Patient-centered care isn’t a marketing concept. It means the clinic is actually structured around the patient’s journey,” Ross says. “Every decision about how Haven operates comes back to that.”
Comments
Members of the editorial staff of San Diego Reader were not involved in the creation of this content.