DR. KARISSA WALTON Puts Wellness on Wheels

As Founder and Medical Director of The Mobile Health Doc, Dr. Karissa Walton offers a full line of naturopathic medical services on an innovative platform — a cargo van containing a 90-inch hyperbaric chamber and sporting a photo mural of Thumb Butte on its side.

Inspired by her mother’s difficulty in finding adequate care at the end of her fight against cancer, Walton rolled out her practice months before the pandemic triggered huge growth in demand for home-based care.

An Arizona native, the 33-year-old Walton graduated from Tempe’s Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in 2018 and quickly found her way to Prescott, briefly practicing out of an office before launching her mobile practice in October 2019.

She also opened a site-based clinic at 140 N. Granite St. in April 2021, and last fall a second Naturopathic Doctor and a Family Nurse Practitioner (who can accept Medicare and commercial health insurance) came onboard.

The Mobile Health Doc provides primary care, pain management, nutrient IV therapy, regenerative injection therapies, acupuncture and more through the mobile clinic and office. For more information see www. themobilehealthdoc.com.

Walton also is a world-class Brazilian JiuJitsu competitor. She and husband Darrell, an airline pilot and 20-year military veteran, recently started a new business, Divergence Training, to offer survival, medical and selfdefense courses.

Prescott LIVING: All right, Karissa, where were you born and raised?

Dr. Karissa Walton: I was born and raised in Arizona. We lived in Phoenix when I was a kid, then I moved to West Virginia for a short time when my mom was married, and then we moved back to Arizona when she got divorced. We’ve been all over Arizona, including Tucson. I went to high school at the Academy of Tucson. I was happy to get out of Tucson, but I met my husband there, so that was nice.

So, I’m an Arizona girl raised by a single mother of three. I mean, other than that short time she was married when we lived in West Virginia.

Prescott LIVING: Where in West Virginia?

Dr. Karissa Walton: I think it was in the Charleston area. I was really young. It was age 2 to 6. I remember climbing trees and helping my mom mow the lawn and that kind of stuff, but I don’t remember a lot of details.

Prescott LIVING: What was your relationship like with your mom, who has had a profound influence on your life and career path?

Dr. Karissa Walton: We were very, very close. I was her righthand girl, especially after she got divorced. When we came back to Arizona, it was just her and I caring for my younger brother and sister. I think I just naturally went into that role of, “Hey, I’ve got to help my mom and take care of these little ones.” She was still pregnant with my little brother when we went cross country to move back to Arizona in our station wagon.

It was me, my mom, my sister and our dog in the station wagon; just traveling across the country to move with the U-Haul and all our stuff. I was keeping a log of her gas mileage because we were poor, really poor. So, my job was budgeting every single little penny.

Prescott LIVING: At 6?

Dr. Karissa Walton: Yeah, at 6. I learned how to divide before I learned how to add. At the time, it seemed normal.

Prescott LIVING: What fueled your lifelong dream to become a doctor?

Dr. Karissa Walton: I always knew from a young age. I told everyone; that’s all I talked about when I was a kid. Even at 6 years old, I was already telling everyone, “Hey, I’m going to be a doctor.”

I was always a big planner, even as a child. So, I had my plan on how I was going to become a doctor, and there was no other option for me as a kid. It was almost like it was within me. I just always believed that it was my calling. So, I said, "All right, God, this is what we’re doing.”

I was always in a caregiver role from that point forward. And then, I eventually transitioned to caring for my mom.

Prescott LIVING: What was your mom sick with?

Dr. Karissa Walton: She had stage 4 colon cancer. She ended up dying at age 47, and she was diagnosed about a year and a half prior. And by the time they diagnosed it, it was already in the liver; it had metastasized at that point.

The doctors said there was nothing that could be done, but they went ahead and did the surgery to remove as much as they could.

Even with chemotherapy, the oncologist said she had maybe six months to live, six months of misery, so she chose not to do that. She still had the surgery, but then after that, she decided to find some alternatives.

Prescott LIVING: Oh no. How old were you when your mom died?

Dr. Karissa Walton: I was 23. It was right between college and when I would have started medical school. I was applying for school and still working full-time at the University of Arizona while taking graduate classes. When my mom got sick, I instead decided to hit the brakes and go on family medical leave so that I could care for her full time.

She didn’t have anyone else. She had a really hard upbringing, and our family’s never been super close or anything so all we had was each other. So, we were just very, very close. I wouldn’t want it any other way; she didn't want it any other way. She didn’t want to go into a care home or anything like that. She said, “If I’m going to die, I want to be at home. I want to be at peace.” And she was.

When I was at home with my mom, through that process of her seeking better forms of health care, we found naturopathic medicine. And she was able to extend her lifetime and completely turn around her quality of life during that time. She ended up living a year and a half, and all the oncologists were like, “What is happening?” They hadn’t seen anything like it. And it was because of the type of medicine and the care that she was receiving through naturopathic medicine.

She was so healthy. She was a beautiful, vibrant woman. You would’ve never known that she had any kind of cancer and was as sick as she was.

Unfortunately, there was a point when things started to decline. Had we caught it a little earlier, she would have been fine, but it was just too late. That’s why I nag everyone about prevention and screening now. If insurance won’t cover your screening, who cares? Go get it done!

Prescott LIVING: What was the process of earning a naturopathic medical degree, and how is it similar to getting a conventional MD degree?

Dr. Karissa Walton: Getting into school’s essentially the same. And then once you get accepted into a naturopathic medical program, the first two years look nearly identical to a traditional MD program, but they start introducing different modalities on top of that.

For example, my favorite modality is physical medicine. We learn how to actually feel the joints, basically from day one. Doing a very good physical exam is so important, especially when you’re learning orthopedic and sports medicine, stuff like that.

We also learn how to perform manipulations similar to chiropractic, but we call it NMT, or naturopathic manipulative therapy. It involves using your palpation skills, or touch, and orthopedic exams to diagnose and correct imbalances in the spine, other joints, or tissues throughout the body.

We learn Tradition Chinese Medicine (TCM) as well. That’s where acupuncture comes in. We learn how to make a TCM diagnosis and then also how to treat based on that. I love acupuncture.

Prescott LIVING: How much of your business is from acupuncture?

Dr. Karissa Walton: It’s probably 10% or less. Most of what we’re doing is primary care, pain management, and IV therapy. Those are the top three.

We’re trying to bring as many therapies as possible here; that’s the goal because Prescott needs it. Real, quality health care is so needed, and we’re so shorthanded, especially when it comes to integrative medicine, which is the model that we provide.

We’re bringing conventional providers and naturopathic providers together so that our community can get the best health care it possibly can.

Prescott LIVING:

When did you first get the idea of being a mobile doctor?

Dr. Karissa Walton: I believe that the seed was planted when I was at home caring for my mom. I didn’t know it at the time.

Eventually my mom couldn’t go in and get the care she needed. It would’ve made it more peaceful if she could have because once you’re on hospice, there’s not much that can be done.

Even with home health care services, there’s not a whole lot they can do as far as treatment, especially when it comes to things like IV therapy. She didn’t have access to any of that anymore. So it just made sense to be able to bring that into the home. And it doesn’t have to be for something as severe as cancer. When I first started practice, I had patients who couldn’t make it into the clinic for all kinds of reasons, whether it was “being too sick to go to the doctor,” their kids or their profession.

Prescott LIVING: You launched The Mobile H ealth Doc practice just before the pandemic began. How did that affect the number of patients coming to you and the kind of treatments they were looking for, and did it increase the potential you saw in the business?

Dr. Karissa Walton: My original model was to give personalized health care in the home; I didn’t want an office. I love house calls so much, just like I love movement. I always enjoy being on the go and keeping my body moving.

I just wanted to be active and working out in the community. But that meant I was only going to be able to treat a small number of patients because going house to house takes a long time.

I was planning on, from a business standpoint, offsetting the small volume during the week with events on the weekends. Then all of those got canceled in 2020 right after I started the mobile clinic.

The positive part was that we were getting a lot of calls from people who couldn’t get into their primary care doctor because they had a cough or a fever and nobody would see them. So, they were desperate for care because they couldn’t go into most doctor’s offices and were very reluctant to go to the hospital because of the level of virus transmission.

I did gain more patients through that process, and we were able to keep everything contained in the home and not expose others to COVID. I think that alone made the care so much better, and that was amazing.