Zain Hakeem, DO

"Dr. Hakeem grew up in Baton Rouge and did his undergraduate training in philosophy at LSU. He completed his Osteopathic medical degree in Fort Worth at the Texas College of Osteopathy, and then went on to complete a dual residency in the specialties of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Board Certified in Pediatrics. In addition to working at RiverRock, Dr. Hakeem also still practices hospital medicine, to maintain his skills in acute medical care, and to maintain an awareness of the cost of errors in primary care. Due to COVID-19, Dr. Hakeem will be spending more time working in hospitals and ICUs, traveling as far as Atlanta, or other hotspots, and may need to have patients seen by covering physicians. This is regrettable, but necessary, since his skills as an acute care physician are currently urgently needed, and after a hospital shift, he must quarantine and test before seeing patients in the office. He is also the creator of the Rx-Bayes App – which is a statistical app to help doctors understand that tests are not always accurate, and how to tell when the tests are more likely to be wrong. He’s also given a lecture for patients to understand the basics of that."

"At RiverRock, health actually means freedom. Or if you like the fancier, more precise word, it means autonomy. Just like having money in the bank means you have the freedom to make choices, you also have a health bank. Health actually means freedom. People talk about your "financial health" because there's an intuitive understanding of this concept - that health is autonomy. Health is the "money in the bank" that allows you to make decisions about your life. If you have 10 million dollars in your financial bank account, you have a lot of freedom to go buy things, or do things with that money. Just like having money in the bank means you have the freedom to make choices, you also have a health bank. But, if you weigh 500lbs, or you have heart failure, or you're just not fit enough, then your depleted "health bank account" will limit what things you can choose to experience, no matter how much money you have. You can't go snowboarding. You can't go climb machu picchu. You might dream of those things, but those are just illusory, pie-in-the-sky dreams. Those dreams cannot become reality, because you don't have enough freedom to choose to make those dreams into reality. But, if you do lose weight, if you recondition your body, become healthier, then suddenly those choices are open; those dreams becomes viable options. Your health has increased, and now you can choose to make those dreams real; because that's what health is - The power to choose which dreams you want to make real. That's what health is — The power to choose which dreams you want to make real. The only reason to have health is so you can do other things. Your doctor should helping you do other things, helping you have more freedom to choose. And that's what RiverRock is really about, what medicine as a whole should be about - moving you to a better state of health, giving you more options, more autonomy, more freedom. It's about increasing the number of things you can choose to do - the number and the quality of the options you have."