About Us
The Art of Evidence Based Medicine
As an anesthesiologist with over 10 years of experience administering different medications intravenously I’ve learned it’s not just what drug you administer but how you administer matters.
Each person is a unique individual and here at Relevare we believe your experience should be tailored to your specific needs in order to maximize treatment effectiveness and comfort.
Why Choose Relevare?
At Relevare, we have a passion for restoring hope and helping individuals live a valued, meaningful, and dignified life. The clinic is led by Jennifer Mallek, MD, who is a fellowship-trained, board-certified anesthesiologist with extensive experience that specializes in personalized intravenous infusion treatments. We believe in a team care model and work closely with your doctors and mental health providers in order to best address the root cause of your problems. We focus on the biopsychosocial model of healing so we can get to know who you are as an individual in order to help you optimize the human fundamentals as you move forward through the treatment series.
Relevare is a small, locally-owned clinic run by passionate providers from within the community. We are fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and pride ourselves in providing tailored, high-quality care to every patient.
A Note from Dr. Mallek
As an anesthesiologist with over ten years of experience, I’ve learned that there is an art to administering medications. Of course, which medication you choose is important but what is often undervalued is the how. The setting, patient’s baseline (anxious, dehydrated, relaxed, tired, etc.), rate of administration, which adjuvants are used, and how all matter as well.
After graduating from Anesthesiology Residency, I completed a year-long fellowship in Acute and Perioperative Pain Medicine in July of 2016. There, I learned in great detail how valuable and versatile ketamine is. This was the first year I gained expertise using ketamine outside of the operating room setting. I saw the difference it made when treating various pain conditions, opiate intolerance, and opiate-dependent patients. It was clear it made a huge difference when treating various pain conditions and opiate intolerance. Using ketamine to treat critical care (ICU) patients is when I first learned about its mental health benefits. This then started the journey that has led me to open Relevare today.
Relieving people of pain – physical or mental – is where I get the most personal satisfaction at work. I believe ketamine therapy has enormous potential to help people in need. With the expertise I have developed through the years, coupled with a compassionate drive, I hope to help restore joy and minimize pain in as many people’s lives as possible.
Our Philosophy
The average age expectancy in the United States in the early 1900s was about 46 years of age.1 Most people up to that point in history succumbed to some kind of infection. Pneumonia, influenza, tuberculosis (i.e., consumption), and gastrointestinal infections (i.e., dysentery) were the leading causes of death.2 The goal of Western medicine: find the culprit, destroy it, and allow the patient to return to their life.
The era of antibiotics, which started in 1904 with penicillin, revolutionized medicine as we know it.3 We were successfully fixing people, and people were living significantly longer. By 2020, the average age expectancy was 78 years old. The face of medicine has changed. Now, most people are dying of heart disease or cancer.4
This shift happened extremely quickly relative to the amount of time Western medicine has been around. In the United States, isolation hospitals in the mid-1700s were for the ill but also provided care to the poor and destitute. In the 19th century, the middle and upper classes that were ill were nursed by their families at home. Even surgery was performed in patients’ homes. Only the poor and socially isolated were cared for at medical institutions.
By late that century, industrialization allowed for greater mobility, and medical facilities grew in their sophistication and complexity. Families and caring communities once took care of their own, and now this is no longer the case.5
Western medicine did its best to keep up with rapid technological change. However, at its core still lies the main philosophy: find the problem, fix it, and release the patient. Many of us now in healthcare recognize the needs of our patients go beyond extending life, but also improving the quality of life we have now.
We are progressively more alienated, living farther from our loved ones. The emotional support and community that Western medicine depended on to function properly slowly dissolved over a few generations. The rates of suicidal ideation, severe depression, and other mental illness continue to steadily rise. Fewer Americans than ever have access to adequate mental health treatments.6
The good news is that there is hope. Many of us healthcare providers have woken up to this fact and are making an active effort to change the face of medicine in order to keep up with the needs of our communities and truly help those in need. If we can fix a problem, then we shall do so, but realistically, this is not possible in many cases.
What we can do is be a source of aid and support in order to minimize and hopefully eliminate pain from one’s life, allowing the moments of joy to shine through so each person can live their best life. Through the art of medicine, we strive to relieve your suffering and empower you to lead a more valued, meaningful, and dignified life.
The rate of mental health disorders is steadily climbing in Western countries including the United States.7 We are living in an environment rich in “cheap dopamine.” Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward and our brains want as much dopamine with as little effort as possible. Activities such as excessive social media use, binge-watching TV shows, and consuming excessive low-nutrient/high-calorie foods can feel good in the short run but can leave us with a lack of long-term fulfillment, diminished motivation and productivity, escapism and avoidance, and impaired relationships (aka. mental health issues). In addition, our poor nutrition has often resulted in micronutrient deficiencies that do not allow our brains to function optimally.8 It’s important to note that not all instant gratification is harmful, everyone needs some leisure and relaxation. However, a balanced approach that incorporates meaningful activities, long-term goals, and genuine relationships is key to overall well-being.
The good news is that there is hope. Our treatments aim to make it easier for you to make the hard choices needed to incorporate lifestyle changes that are in line with your personal identity so that you may live a meaningful and dignified life. Many healthcare providers have been making an active effort to change the face of medicine in order to keep up with the needs of our communities and truly help those in need. If we can fix a problem then we shall do so. Sometimes problems cannot be fixed and we work on minimizing unwanted symptoms and optimizing resilience and perspectives to deal with life’s inevitable suffering. Through the art of medicine, we strive to relieve your suffering and empower you to lead a more valued, meaningful, and dignified life.
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/235703/major-causes-of-death-in-the-us/
- https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/lead1900_98.pdf
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109405/
- https://www.businessinsider.com/leading-causes-of-death-in-1900-and-today-2014-6?op=1
- https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/nhhc/nurses-institutions-caring/history-of-hospitals/
- https://www.mhanational.org/issues/state-mental-health-america
- https://www.jacintoconvit.org/social-science-series-5-mental-health-in-developed-vs-developing-countries/
- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.656290/full