As a board-certified pediatrician and small business owner, Dr. Fiscus Iived the experience of being a front-line, independent practice physician.

After a number of years in private practice, she realized that, while caring for individual patients and families can be extremely gratifying, she wanted to make a difference on a larger scale — reducing preventable diseases and deaths and helping to make the population healthier — especially for children.

in 2016, Dr. Fiscus made the move from private practice to public health finding, as she often calls it, her “true place in medicine.”

For the next five years she led programs at the Tennessee Department of Health that ranged from the promotion of safe sleep for infants to protecting the elderly from COVID-19 and influenza. She also combatted tobacco use in a tobacco-friendly state and led the rollout of the first COVID-19 vaccines.

It was in 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Dr. Fiscus attempted to widen the discussion about ways to vaccinate greater numbers of the population that her life would abruptly change.

Members of the Tennessee state legislators, seizing upon a communication Dr. Fiscus drafted regarding a 34-year old Tennessee court case (allowing some minors to receive vaccinations without parental consent), ignited a political feeding frenzy that led to her dismissal from the post of the state’s top immunization official.

Ironically, the life-changing event didn’t diminish, but further affirmed, Dr. Fiscus’s belief that true public health advocates must follow the facts and speak truth to power. Especially when the lives of the public are at stake.

These days — along with her profile as a sought-after public health speaker and advocate for improving America’s public health systems — Dr. Fiscus works full-time with NGOs and health-focused organizations.

These local, state and national organizations benefit from her unique experience in health and policy, objective approach to problem-solving, collaborative style of working, boundless energy, and commitment to ensuring the health of all people.

Her true place in medicine.

What you get in me is a visionary, a convenor, a collaborator, a communicator, and a leader who views healthcare through an equity lens. There is nothing more energizing to me than identifying a problem, researching the issue, convening the stakeholders, and piloting, and then refining, a solution. I want to see the needle move. I want to do my part to make things better.  Not just a little better, but A LOT better. So, I started working with national organizations that share that passion. What I provide to them is pragmatic expertise— I’ve worked in private practice and in government. I have experienced ground zero and the 30,000-foot view. I know what has a shot at working, and what seems like a good idea but likely won’t get off the ground. With me you get nearly 30 years of experience in medicine and friendly but frank guidance to bring your projects to the finish line.  From conception to scale, we can work together to do our part to help people reach their own goals by ensuring they have every opportunity to live their best lives.

I am a pediatrician who is board-certified through the American Board of Pediatrics. I studied biology and psychology at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN, followed by medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. 

I completed my residency in pediatrics at the James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis before moving to Nashville, TN for a second residency in anesthesiology combined with a fellowship in pediatric critical care at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the Monroe Carell, Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. Somewhere in there I really didn’t want to be an anesthesiologist, left Vanderbilt, and eventually co-founded Cool Springs Pediatrics in Franklin, TN, where I cared for infants, children, and teens (and sometimes young adults who didn’t want to go to a grown-up doctor) for 17 years before joining the Tennessee Department of Health. I served as vice-president and then president of the Tennessee Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, member and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) National Nominating Committee, and now serve as one of thirteen elected members to the AAP’s Board of Directors, representing Tennessee, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Kentucky.

I have also spent the past decade working with the Tennessee Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics to develop a program to provide better behavioral health care access to the children of Tennessee, especially those in foster care. Behavior Health in Pediatrics (BeHiP) has trained more than 2,500 Tennessee pediatricians and other pediatric healthcare providers to screen for, diagnose, and manage behavioral health concerns in children and adolescents. This is an issue close to my heart and this work is more important now than ever before.