Listen to the two part series on our conversation on with Dr. Jessyca Franco-Chavez, NMD on the future of Naturopathic Medicine and the Make America Healthy Again Movement. Dr. Franco-Chavez has been advocating for health and natural medicine. Listen in! SPECIAL OFFER: The first 5 people who follow Dr. Jessyca Franco-Chaves and DM her on IG will receive a free “MAHA” Cap and sticker. DM at @thehealinghouseconcepts on Instagram
Website: www.thehealinghouseconcepts.com, The best way to stay in contact is through @doctorinthehealinghouse and @thehealinghouseconcepts on Instagram, or Dr. Jessyca Franco-Chavez on LinkedIn, regarding my Naturopathic practice and businesses.
Disclosure: This content is for educational purposes; this is not intended to treat anyone medically. Consult your doctor for additional guidance.
Podcast Episode 53 Transcript:
Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your wellbeing, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body. We are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Alara, and today I have a special guest, Dr. Jessica Franco Chavez. She’s a naturopathic medical doctor and she is the Chief Medical Officer of the Healing House Concepts. There are many special things about Dr. Jessica. We are colleagues. We went through medical school together, and so I actually am going to bring her on so that she can share a little bit about herself before we proceed to our conversation about the future of naturopathic medicine and the movement to Make America healthy again. So welcome, Dr. Jessica.
Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
Oh, thank you for, I’m really Excited.
Thank you for taking the time.
Yeah, absolutely. I am so privileged and honored to be here and sharing information about other ways that naturopathic doctors can be of service. Now in this MAHA movement that we all hopefully have heard about and recognize, I say health doesn’t take a side, so we’re not promoting a slogan of any particular party, but it’s more of awareness and integration of more wellness and natural healing ability and talking about food as medicine and how we can prevent disease and combat some of the large percentages of illnesses that are happening to our people here in America and our children.
My platform has kind of evolved. As Dr. Lara mentioned, we attended naturopathic medical school together at SCNM, now known as Sonora. Although people might recognize that name a bit more, we had a great experience there and integrated our classes well. I was the class president at the time, I think you were the class president of your cohort. We had integrated that, and that really kind of sparked my appreciation for more advocacy, I’ll just say. Listening to people and really having to be bipartisan in a medical school setting, classroom, taking in what people had to say, really trying to reflect and register how I could portray that information to the higher ups, the deans or the president or whomever we were having a discussion with. It really gave me a profound understanding for multiple personalities and multiple avenues of thought.
Then being able to kind of dissect that and break it down and being aiming to be graceful and mindful at the same time that I’m not just representing my opinion, but I am really the spokesperson for a larger body. I soon then started with the Student Government Association, SGA, there at the school. I was lucky enough to go to a DC fly event hosted by ANMP, which is the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians. It’s a yearly legislative effort for lobbying days in the spring. It was a really cool experience then because it was my first time going to DC and having these asks to go into these congressmen and women’s office and have a formal meeting with people that can actually impact change at the federal level. So that really was something that I kind of bit me of, huh, this is interesting.
This is where healthcare and policy meet that fork in the road. Then what does it look like afterward and how can we continue to pursue having a voice and advocating for our medicine? Because our medical history has shown since 1910, Flexner report, Rockefellers, it has been suppressed to a large degree. Within this kind of MAHA structure, I again feel that it has been imbibed, this whole recognition of our medicine. Whether you want to call yourself a MAHA doctor or not, there are very profound similarities when you take the movement, this grassroots movement that was really a slogan and for whatever purposes that parties have, they used it, but it has melded into this more appreciation for prevention, whole health, chronic disease awareness, and food as medicine. Then of course, looking at some of the things that people may recognize in the media right now are the petroleum-based food dyes and all of the things that RFK Junior now is Secretary of Health and Human Services is aiming to reduce the cost burden of these artificial foods, but also on our grander scale, reduce the chronic disease that we see associated with these types of preservative laden foods.
That’s where my story evolved. I went back after we graduated in 2017. I’m from New Mexico, and so I thought, well, of course I’m going back home. I have to serve my people and this is where I belong. But I recognized that the state is not licensed for naturopathic doctors. So for those of you that may be aware, we are licensed in 26 states and territories as of today, but that hasn’t always been the case, right? It’s been state by state. In 2019, I was part of a small group of naturopathic doctors who moved back to New Mexico and they were really excited and up for the challenge of getting us licensed. I was part of that cohort. After a few years here and there doing what we needed to do, talking to our local health and human services, talking to the New Mexico Medical Board, the pharmacy board, chiropractic board, all of the committees, whether it be on the Senate side or the House of Representatives, countless meetings with the attorneys and our lobbyists.
I just, again, this blossomed another understanding of, whoa, this is how complex that legislative effort and politics can be. We got our state licensed with a robust scope of practice as a Naturopathic Practice Act bill in 2019 under the New Mexico Medical Board. That was a game changer for all of us. There were a few of us in the state, and now to date, there are 33 and I think we’d have a lot bigger of a population of naturopathic doctors here. But the COVID era slowed us down for obvious reasons and transition efforts and advocating and whatnot. Soon after that, however, we also became credentialed for Medicaid, which is particularly important in a rural state like ours. That took a while to do, but we got that under our belt. And so obviously able to serve our Medicaid population of patients.
We are one of only five states that are licensed in naturopathic medicine that actually have credentialing for Medicaid. This past DC fly that was one of our asks is to say, Hey, in the states and territories that we are licensed, please, please help us serve our people. Because one of the top priorities of the MAHA Commission executive order signed by President Trump in February of this year was to address the primary healthcare practitioner shortage. To help fulfill these initiatives and these pillars of health, we obviously need the population that microcosm from that federal initiative to be able to serve these people, our people, the population. That was one of the asks, and it was beautifully aligned that we centered it around, ‘Hey, if we’re aiming as America to help propel this MAHA – Make America Healthy Again initiative, then we absolutely need help.’
Naturopathic doctors should be at the forefront. As chronic disease experts, we offer the most robust and highest level of clinical nutrition hours. So we take plus or minus, depending on the school, right? 220 clinical nutrition hours and other, I’m sorry, other MDs, DOs or nurse practitioners. MDs and DOs, I think take zero to 10, and then nurse practitioners can take somewhere around 70 to 80. And so of course, that still varies right from wherever you come from. However, the key takeaway is that we are truly the experts in clinical nutrition, and we should have a seat at the table when it comes to recognizing the impact of these federal initiatives and executive orders. That just again propelled me into serving my people here in New Mexico. I started the Healing House of New Mexico Wellness Center, and it was a five-acre healing facility.
I had everything from a food medicine cafe to a medical apparel store, a big apothecary with all kinds of herbs and oils from New Mexico, and local honeys and things that people would bring and we would sell altogether. Then, of course, I had my naturopathic medical practice, so I saw a lot of patients just as a primary care practitioner. That was challenging because you want to see, I don’t know if you’ve had this fork in the road of who you’re trying to serve and how you’re trying to do it and what you want to focus on. To be honest, generally, I have the utmost respect for gps, general practitioners or doctors who see everything in everybody. In my aim to do that, I started to kind of understand, okay, I need to step back and I need to really get concentric on what it is.
I mostly resonate with the idea that I would love to stitch everybody up and do all these other things, but it was taking a lot of time and energy. That was a recognition and realization the first time around. I was the chief medical officer of over 21 practitioners. So I had every practitioner imaginable under the healing house, and everybody had their room and focus. Some were master fire Reiki practitioners, while others were nurse practitioners. We’d have gong ceremonies, we’d have yoga therapy sessions. We had a Himalayan salt therapy room, and we shipped over 4,000 pounds of Himalayan salt from Pakistan. My husband built a beautiful cave out of Himalayan salt, and this was a kind of craze in early 2018. So, yeah, we created this beautiful complex where people could come and stay. I would have patients coming in and staying with us for anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks. We just really kind of give them a schedule of what their daily, they’d go in and they’d see me in the morning, and then they’d do yoga in the afternoon, and then we would create a whole menu. So I created everybody’s menu for them, food, medicine, so wild, whimsical foods, but it was all with the holistic approach in mind.
Some would be vegan. So we catered to them in that regard, and we had a great run. Then we sold the medical center during COVID. That was a challenging time. But nonetheless, the silver lining is that we moved closer to the city. Now we’re in Corrales, New Mexico, and that’s kind of the green belt of Albuquerque. Albuquerque is our major city here in New Mexico, and it’s a farming community. I always joke that there are a lot of dirt roads, but the main paved road is still 30 miles an hour, because we have horses that share the road with vehicles. So it’s a really great place to serve people. This is where we were meant to be all along. We bought another fairly large property, and we just had my practice, my office building, completely rehabbed, a 200-year-old Adobe.
The walls were crumbling off, and this is where I’m sitting. I have a couple of exam rooms and an apothecary again, and then another couple of practitioners working here as well. That’s what I’ve been working on over the last couple of years on the personal front. But on the advocacy front, about a year and a half ago, I had an intuitive dream and thought come into my mind, and it was like, ‘You need to reach out and figure out what RFK Junior is doing.’ And this was out of the blue. I mean, I had known about him. I gained a thorough understanding of environmental policy. He was the one who had sued Monsanto, and I really had an affinity for some of the understanding he had around autism and autism research and the autism community, specifically guided by moms, because I have a couple of family members who have autism that they’re living with. That was something that I was really aiming to understand a little bit more, and kind of see what about now.
Dr. Jessica, with the moms and I, work with this population as well. What was their experience when they noticed a change in their child? Were they able to identify? Yeah, it was after getting this round of vaccines that I noticed a change in my child.
Yeah. From some of the autism networks and the founders of these organizations, hundreds of families are part of their community, and the mainframe story unfolds within hours to the next day. My child was no longer my child. There was a drastic shift. The moms are like, Don’t question us. We know our child better than anybody. We saw this drastic change and shift going from being maybe talking, depending on if it was a toddler, if it was an older child, talking to completely nonverbal within hours, and then having irrational emotions and tantrums and screaming fits. It was something we now know there’s this neuroinflammation that needs to be studied a little bit more and to kind of highlight what HHS is aiming to do. His RFK Junior really has had the background to explore this.
So he’s saying, Hey, because we have all these questions, we need to start investigating and trying to help frame some of these answers. If we need to start studying, and it’s not just, I think he gets pigeonhole into, oh, it’s just vaccines, vaccines. Now, it can be many things. He has mentioned that there are many other environmental factors, causative factors, and inflammatory factors that may be contributing to the child’s methylation or detoxification issue, and they’re unable to absorb everything that’s entering their body. Maybe it’s the food, maybe it’s the quality of food. Maybe they’re living in a home that has some type of mold or a perpetuating environmental toxin. He’s saying, Hey, well, if we don’t know, and we’re seeing the rise of autism. So in the 1950s, 1960s, unfortunately, we have to do retrospective studies to try to understand what the percentages were back then, because we didn’t have the DSM-III that categorizes clinical autism until the 1980s.
In these retrospective studies that they’ve done with what we have today, they say two to four children out of every 10,000 children had autism back then. Well now as of 2025, it’s one in 31 children in the United States who has autism. I like to highlight California because, as California goes, so goes the United States, one in 12.5 male children have been diagnosed with autism. And so looking at the profound incidents, you have to consider what we are paying attention to and what are we not paying attention to? If vaccines need to be studied a little bit more and we need to give effort and time and attention to a potential causative factor for some children, then that’s what we need to do. And I’m all for that. People should have the choice, in my opinion, as long as there’s true informed consent that we can stand by and that we trust our agency to be really doing the double-blind placebo controlled studies, then let’s do what we can to help our healthcare system along. Because right now it’s not there.
It’s not there. Unfortunately, parents are not getting true informed consent at all. It’s just, this is a vaccine schedule. Your child is two months, we’re going to pump them with these vaccines. And that’s it. And it’s disturbing to me because we know as naturopathic medical doctors in our training, we did learn all of these things. We learned what true informed consent entails and what it comprises. And there is no medical clinic out there that’s doing that. As a mom, when I first went to their office, they never gave me consent. My oldest daughter is 15. I was already informed and educated before I came in. I knew what my decision was going to be, and my decision was going to be, I’m waiving all vaccines, examine my child, just do the wellness check. Most parents don’t take the time to inform themselves. More parents are educating themselves and reading on what are the ingredients, what are the potential effects of it? And the doctor, the pediatrician, was really nice. After the first couple of visits, she said, absolutely, we’ll respect your choices.
They made me sign a document stating that I understood the risks I was taking by not giving her a vaccine. So then why don’t doctors do the same on the flip side and say, these are the vaccines they’re getting? Here’s the ingredients, here’s the inserts, here’s the potential side effects, risks and so forth. They don’t because they know that their patients are probably going to be freaked out and not do it. I think as naturopathic doctors, we are the experts in lifestyle medicine that we have a lot of training, a lot of education on how to raise healthy children. When I get parents in my office who are choosing not to vaccinate their children, I support them. Then at the same time, we talk about the importance of how important is it for them to eat a healthy diet for the mom to nurse, because we know that breast milk is going to be, that is where they’re going to develop their immune system the best way, and they’re going to develop a lot more, just better overall.
They must also understand not to introduce food coloring and processed foods to their child’s diet. If you start from the beginning with a clean slate, they’ll develop healthy behaviors and patterns as they become adults, and they’ll understand why they eat this way. One of the things that I’m really excited about this movement, most people who know me would think that it’s the vaccine part, which it is, but it’s cleaning up our food. It’s so important that we have real food. I’m sure you’re aware of this. You hear it from your patients or other people, but we have a patient here in the country who can’t have gluten, dairy, or anything else. They’re very sensitive. They have all these side effects from what the foods they eat. Then they go to Italy and they eat bread and pasta and all the pastries, and they have no side effects of the food they’re eating.
The moment they arrive back to the country, they’re at it again. They’re experiencing bloating, gas, diarrhea, and so forth. There is definitely something that is really off with our food here, the quality of our soil, our air, our food, what’s allowed in our food. I’m excited about the legislative changes that are going to come, and we’ve started already to see some of those, the legislation come through of getting rid of the food dies. But what I hear Dr. Jessica is when it comes to implementation, how realistic and at what pace do we anticipate seeing that? Have you gotten any perspective on your experiences working at the legislative level?
Yes, so I started to give a backstory of how I’m connected to the MAHA movement.
I started working with RFK Junior about a year ago, and I was initially involved in grassroots efforts. What can we do in New Mexico to support this independent candidate? I’ve never been in that political realm where I’m like, oh, I’m Republican or I’m Democrat or I’m this or I’m that. I’ve always been very open-minded and self-reliant on what makes sense to me at that time. But knowing him and his history, I thought, okay, I need to explore this. I’m having this intuitive pool. So I started doing all of this data analysis and ballot access stuff in New Mexico, and then soon after, they interviewed and they wanted to hire me as a New Mexico director. I was like, okay, of course I’ll do it. I’m already kind of engaged. I’ve started this movement here in New Mexico just by happenstance. Then they interviewed me for a regional position.
I became the Southwest director for the Kennedy campaign, the Team Kennedy campaign. That’s when I really started to be involved and have weekly meetings with the higher-ups and RFK Junior would come on these meetings. It was just a whole other understanding of how we get from point A to point B with a political candidate and him being on the more understanding functional medicine, preventative side. There was a naturopathic thread in there, and we ended up hosting him here in New Mexico for his Recovering America premier. It was this last July of 2024, and it was on his personal experience with addiction. It’s on YouTube. It’s a great documentary for those who are interested in looking at it. But really what the highlight was for me is that when I presented and I was there during that whole thing and I presented and we were talking about healing farms, and that’s really where he’s going at it with this whole addiction.
Addiction has taken over so many of our people in our communities and on a daily basis, I can’t remember the number, but the numbers are crazy, and these are things that can be prevented. He’s like, if we have these healing farms and we’re able to integrate these people into a community that is a way of life. They’re working on the farm, cleaning up their act in food, social life, and all these aspects. It makes sense to have these in rural America and to explore whether this can become a staple. Well, huh, interesting. My healing Center was very focused on that. We had grown our own herbs and food and had our food medicine cafe. That spoke dear and near to my heart. It’s kind of like before MAHA had a name, we had already begun these conversations about Maha at this level.
And so that’s where my effort or efforts at the legislative level can be seen through MAHA. To kind of go back around to your question, the executive orders that President Trump put together really highlight what that platform and commission embodies, and it is chronic disease prevention, having a comprehensive strategy, what they have put in place. It’s not just a matter of, ‘ Okay, let’s see what can happen. ‘ No, they have strict assessments that are ongoing a hundred days for what it’s looking like for children in their schools and their school lunches. Then at 180 days, just about September, which people may have heard in the media, that’s where they really want to have a strong hold on what the autism spectrum looks like from a, not just preventative standpoint, but from the causative factor standpoint and being able have a little bit more knowledge and understanding to speak on the scientific method and scientific approach of why we’re seeing such astronomical percentage growth in autism yearly.
They’re putting all of these together, but really within this whole framework of HHS, they’ve created what’s called AHA. And it’s the administration for a Healthy America. This agency along with C-D-C-N-I-H-F-D-A, and of course RRFK Junior, who is kind of the ringleader of all of it, they’re charging forth with making sure that these pillars of health are enforced and followed through by a MAHA caucus. And the Maha Caucus was just announced recently by Senator Marshall, and I believe there’s five senators and about 12 House of Representatives that are collaborating on this. They’re really in charge of ensuring that all of this information flows from federal to state to other agencies, empowering others, and mobilizing legislative priorities across various health agencies. That’s kind of how we’re going to ensure that some of these things can happen and that we are being as advantageous and proactive as possible in making sure that we are structured enough so that these things can happen at the micro levels of government and the micro levels of community because we, the people have a voice and we can make change and we can talk to our patients.
We’re just seeing this ripple effect of understanding. Anybody who goes into such a high-level position or who has that level of responsibility, it’s hard to criticize. You don’t know all of the other behind-the-scenes things that are happening and really who has their hand in a controlling factor of it. However, I do believe that we’ve made significant progress thus far. And even with the petroleum-based synthetic food dyes that Dr. Marque had announced a couple of weeks ago, by 2026, there will be five or six food dyes that will hopefully be completely removed from some of the American food diet.
So will these diets be completely illegal for manufacturers to use in their products that make, is that the goal that’s making it like you can’t even use this?
Then, of course, there’s the who’s overseeing that. You’re absolutely right when there’s a change; anytime we want to make a change, it does have to happen at the legislative political level. That’s where you make an impact for everyone in a positive or negative way. We’re not always careful, but creating change is a very involved process. So you have these leaders at the top making decisions, signing policies that they’re moving these, they’re creating these changes, but it takes time and it’s a process of getting things properly through. What are some of the things that you’re seeing Robert F. Kennedy getting pushback on? I’m sure there are many things he gained, pushed back and challenged on because he came in with a list of things he wants to do that we’re in agreement with. And of course, we know that there’s going to be the opposition, right, the adversity, the challenges that he has to fight through. What are some of the top things that you’re seeing that he’s struggling to get his points across?
He has to be very neutral when he’s explaining certain things. I know he’s had data on vaccine injury. I think the COVID vaccine has been kind of a bone of contention or confusion in the nation and throughout the media, and whether you believe whoever spins it a certain way based on their agenda for your perspective. But I do think that he has had the most ridicule about the COVID vaccination to date. He was kind of one of the ones in the beginning saying, Hey, I’ve seen some of the VAs reporting and the adverse reactions and deaths that I’m hearing from people in my cohort, and this is of concern. That’s something that even when he was vying for the position and he was going through all of the committee hearings and whatnot, he had to play it safe. I do know that more evidence and research are going to be coming out in the near future, as it’s already available. It’s so astounding. I think he has to be a little bit conservative on that approach, just so that he doesn’t turn people off and that he can just kind of see himself in a way where he’s starting to be looked at as an authority and not as somebody that’s just still holding that conspiracy theory flag.
Now, if we have so many doctors and scientists that are speaking up, at least on social media platforms, whether it’s on podcasts or YouTube, and of course all the other platforms, I hear so many of these experts like doctors who are very well versed in immunology and even vaccine production, and they’ve seen the trend of what it caused. Are any of these doctors making these legislative calls? Are they making themselves known to these politicians and explain, I know there are some, but are there enough people that are saying, this is what we’re seeing clinically or in labs, there’s a correlation here that should be looked into and do more research, have more people come forward on the political aspect?
That’s a good question. So he has different kinds of levels of his supportive network and group and the people that have been appointed to HHS, of course, a little bit more well-known like Dr. Barria and Dr. Oz for CMS. And Dr. Barrio was one of the, I guess it would be called founders of that declaration during COVID where he was saying, Hey, the Barrington Declaration that, Hey, we deserve to have a little bit more understanding before you roll out these different levels of pharmaceuticals, whether it be vaccines or whatever the approach may be. We need a little bit more informed consent and safety provisions. He has been kind of highlighted since the beginning as one of the people who were standing behind the curtain, saying, wait a second, is this safe? Is this safe? Is this safe? So now it was great to see that he got appointed and the other couple that are kind of more behind the scenes but are still really working on the clinical aspect of it, Dr. Robert Malone.
He was one of, for all intents and purposes, one of the inventors of the mRNA technology. And so he is indeed one of the dear advisors to RFK Junior and is ensuring that things are brought to light in a certain way. Then Dr. Ryan Cole was really one of the first physicians doing the autopsy reports after COVID deaths and kind of seeing there’s some oddities and curiosities that we’re seeing that just don’t line up. So of course, all of these people, and then Dr. Peter McCullough, he is one of, I think, the world-renowned when it comes to cardiac research and Radiology.
Yes, exactly. And in Texas. So, his chief researcher is always bringing new research and saying, Hey, we need to look at this. We need to look at that. So they’re at the forefront. I know for a fact that they’re all collaborating and making sure that all of this from whatever level of government, even if it’s universities, right, because the NIH and the funding and the grants, and most universities do most of our research, that they’re all in talks and making sure that we’re not missing anything when it comes to a lone scientist or doctor in the corner researching something and then it not being able to be brought to light. So I think it’s a more comfortable environment for being able to speak to the science, whether science should be debated and deliberated. If it’s repeatable, then that’s where I think HHS is really trying to change that people can have in Switzerland, let’s just say, they come up with a curious signaling that is something that needs to be researched more, maybe because it could cause harm.
All of these signals in the scientific community, just because some community discovers it, the scientific community doesn’t, HHS and FDA and NIH, and all of them don’t just need to sign off on it. They need to actually do reproducible, repeatable research within their own environment. If that can be done and we can start assessing the efficacy and safety, then we go. That’s where the scientific method and the standard of science comes, and people can debate and deliberate and question, and science has always been founded on questioning. You should question it, right? You should be able to think it through and question it. That’s how we learn, that’s how we collaborate, that’s how we get better. I just hope that people can reflect and step back and say, Hey, instead of shaming it like, oh, this is taking too long, or It’s already been FDA approved. Why would you go back? Well, we have to go back. Some of these studies weren’t ever placebo-controlled, or maybe the placebo itself was tainted in some way. And so, again, being able to go back in time, we need to ensure that the products we put out are the safest and the best that we can guarantee. And we’ve done everything that we know how to do.
I think we’ll wrap up this episode, and we’ll continue the conversation in the next one. However, what is truly necessary is the restoration of the integrity of these scientific institutions. Suppose we do not restore that integrity, a lot of Americans. In that case, a lot of people all over the world are not going to be trusting of our political, our governments, our scientific community, our medical community, because there’s been, trust has been shattered amongst people, especially in the last five years. By establishing these processes in place and ensuring the integrity of the research is maintained, they’re conducting the research and reproducing it to verify its safety and effectiveness. This is really the bottom line: is this safe? Because if it’s not effective, but it’s not going to hurt me, I’m willing to try it, but if it’s going to hurt me and it’s not safe, then so we need to go back to the priority is this product or therapeutic safe for us to provide it to all people who might be in need of it.
So, Dr. Jessica, thank you for this segment of the conversation. We’re going to continue the conversation with Dr. Jessica, as it relates to the future of naturopathic medicine and the Maha movement. So, thank you for listening to this episode. Until next time, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website at raicesndmedcenter.com. Until next time, be blessed.