THE ELEMENT OF EVIDENCE

Gilbert and her husband, Worth Frank, have a home just two blocks from the clinic and are raising two young daughters, Olivia, 6, and Emma, 3. Olivia has started first grade at the Friends School of Minnesota, which has Gilbert very excited. “If I could design a school, this is what I’d create,” she said. “It suits a Reed philosophy—to really dig into what you love.”

At her alma mater, Gilbert remembers that the emphasis was always on digging, investigating, and doing original research. “At Reed it’s ‘don’t just believe this because I tell you. Let’s go to the primary sources,’” she recalls. A preference for investigation over tradition also guides Gilbert’s work as a medical director.

“It’s just astounding when we look at how much of what we do; there’s no evidence for it—or there’s evidence against it—like antibiotics for ear infections in children, for example. At least 50 percent of them are viral, and most of the rest are going to go away anyway. You look at the studies and you find out they actually don’t get better any quicker…and it’s causing a lot of resistance to antibiotics. So not only is it not helping, it’s doing harm.”

“The movement to do evidence-based medicine just suits me, philosophically and personally, to a T,” she adds. “And I love being in a position at the Family Tree Clinic where I have the power to implement evidence-based practice.

Elizabeth Noll is assistant editor of the Minnesota Women’s Press in St. Paul. This is her first article for Reed.