Our annual list, plus stories on fighting the pandemic at Palomar Health, respiratory therapists, nurse support, giving birth while masked, and why you should put your mental health first—ASAP!
Palomar Health infection control officer Valerie Martinez, infectious disease specialist and medical director Dr. Sandeep Soni, and environmental health services worker Maria Zaragoza-Magno
The annual list is chosen by SDCMS and voting physicians who refer those within and outside of their specialty
By Toluwalasé (Lasé) Ajayi, M.D
Front row, left to right: Paul D. Kim, MD, Ramin Raiszadeh, MDBack row: Stephanie Haua, PA-C, Josephine Turner, Administrator, Sophea Bergen, PA-C, Davina Lam, PA-C
For almost two decades, the San Diego County Medical Society (SDCMS) has worked collaboratively with San Diego Magazine to recognize physicians who are held in the highest regard by their peers. Votes and nominations are open to all physicians in San Diego. The voting physicians are asked to vote for physicians within and outside their specialty to whom they would refer their friends and family. Through this process we have identified 747 physicians in 98 specialties.In a synchronized effort, SDCMS confirmed every individual nominee’s Medical Board of California licensing and current practicing status. Through this exhaustive process, 747 physicians are being honored this year. Many of them have also been recognized for multiple years since we began publishing this list. (These physicians have the number of years they have been selected listed in brackets behind their name.)I must point out that many superb physicians are not represented on this list. The selection criteria are strict, with only a few percent of physicians selected in each specialty. Many physicians received multiple votes from their peers but did not reach the threshold to be on the list. The best choice of physician for a patient should include many factors. All physicians in San Diego work collaboratively to provide the very best care for all of their patients.We welcome and encourage all San Diego County physicians to participate in their county and state medical societies as we work toward the SDCMS vision: “Physicians United for a Healthy San Diego.” We appreciate the assistance of all of the physicians who voted, and we thank San Diego Magazine for their support.Congratulations to all of our 2022 Top Doctor selectees,Toluwalasé (Lasé) Ajayi, M.D.President 2022-2023, San Diego County Medical Society
Top Doctors 2022
* Brackets denote the number of years chosen as a Top Doctor
ABDOMINAL SURGERY
Mark Christopher Takata, MD [7]Scripps Clinic Medical Group 10666 N Torrey Pines Rd, MS 213 La Jolla, CA 92037 (858) 554-8984
San Diego is a hotbed of medical trials, which often unearth the future of medicine. Here are the big ones being tested right now.
Illustrations by Ileana Soon
By Randy Dotinga
clinical trials
Illustrations by Ileana Soon
For those with an arm or a mouth to spare, San Diego scientists are in need. They’re armed with pills and injections that may contain the future of healthcare, the big breakthrough. They may protect people from a virus like Covid-19, treat a disease such as diabetes, or offer insight into the next steps toward a cancer cure.
“The advances of tomorrow will come from clinical trials being conducted today,” says Dr. Thomas Buchholz, chief scientific officer at Scripps Health. This city is a hot spot for clinical trials, a vital component of medical research. At least 2,400 are currently underway in the San Diego region, testing treatments for conditions ranging from psoriasis to phantom limb pain. That’s 7 percent of all active clinical trials in the nation.
“San Diego has a robust portfolio of trials, largely due to the excellence of our health care systems and the strength of our scientific and biotechnology communities,” says Dr. Buchholz. In fact, pharmaceutical companies turned to hundreds of San Diegans to test five Covid-19 vaccines that are now authorized for use around the world: Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson/Janssen, and Novavax.
Being a part of the future has its pros and cons. Subjects often get paid, and they may gain access to cutting-edge treatments. But experimental medications may not work as well as existing drugs or cause serious side effects. In many trials, some patients get placebos instead of real medications. This is a routine part of the process to determine whether there’s any benefit to the drugs, but it may leave sick patients without a treatment that turns out to be effective.
Despite the risks, clinical trials attract participants who hope to help usher in a healthier future. And in some cases, clinical trials are the best option for patients with life-threatening diseases. “Some cancers become resistant to the standard approaches, and clinical trials can offer the greatest hope in this setting,” says Buchholz.
Here’s a look at several important clinical trials that are underway in the San Diego region.
Breast Cancer
Can Radiation Treatment Be Shortened?
Scripps MD Anderson Cancer Center is testing whether it’s feasible to adjust the time that certain breast cancer patients require radiation. Subjects will receive the same cumulative radiation dose, but they’ll be randomly assigned to get it over 3 or 5 weeks. Researchers will study how the patients fare and explore whether the shorter treatment period improves their quality of life.
Atrial Fibrillation
Could Surgery Be a Good First Treatment?
People with atrial fibrillation, a kind of irregular heartbeat, typically start treatment by taking blood thinners to prevent clots. But blood thinners can cause bleeding and bruising. At Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center and Scripps Memorial Hospital, cardiologists are recruiting patients to undergo implantation of a Watchman FLX left atrial appendage closure device as a first-line treatment. The device prevents blood clots from escaping a part of the heart where they may form between heartbeats.
Depression
Can Brain Therapy Help Patients Who Can’t Feel Pleasure?
Patients whose depression doesn’t respond to medication often turn to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), in which short magnetic pulses stimulate nerve cells. UCSD is testing TMS in patients who have depression with anhedonia—an inability to feel pleasure. The goal is to expand personalized medicine, in which patients get treatments that are the ideal options for their specific conditions.
Long Covid
What Does It Mean for Kids and Young Adults?
Rady Children’s and UC San Diego are working to understand how long Covid—wide-ranging symptoms including fatigue, joint pain, headaches, “brain fog,” fever, shortness of breath, anxiety, depression, chronic cough, sleep problems, and more that last beyond infection—is affecting children and young adults up to age 25. The study also hopes to identify more concrete risk factors for developing the condition, the incidence of which is not currently known but is estimated to occur in about 10-30% of people who have had acute Covid-19 infections. Participants do not need to have had Covid-19 or suffered long-term effects after infection to participate in this $1.5 billion, four-year-long nationwide study that is in part funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Exercise
Will Trolley Access Boost Public Health?
UCSD is tracking 465 people who work on the La Jolla campus for over two years in the wake of the opening of a new San Diego Trolley station. The researchers expect they’ll find that access to public transit improves health by boosting well-being, lowering depression, and improving quality of life.
About four weeks ago, Claire noticed a large white spot on the roof of our son Jasper’s mouth—about the size of a nickel. She stuck her finger in there, tried to see if it was food or one of the many nonsensical objects that naturally migrate into childrens’ mouths.
It didn’t budge. She brought him to me in a panic. I tried to get my finger in there to dislodge it. Felt hard, but didn’t budge or rub off. Over the next few days, family and friends tried. This white spot was part of him.
With a child at Jasper’s stage of development—nine months old, eight teeth, strong jaw, and strong opinions about adults prodding their fingers in his face—it was hard to get a great look at it without him properly freaking out, wailing, biting, calling the cops. We managed to make him laugh, and snapped a blurry pic. Sent it to everyone we knew. A flurry of Google searches revealed he had at least a few dozen diseases.
My dad, a retired dentist who over 50 years saw almost every form of mouth trauma, was stumped. He showed it to other dentists. All of them, baffled. Was it exposed bone? A malformed palate? My dad said he “didn’t think it was malignant, because there’s no inflammation around the edges.” He was right. Jasper’s mouth was just a normal pink little baby mouth. And he remained happy, content, active, never complained when he ate or stuck a remote control in his mouth.
I have a natural optimism. I tend to not freak out until a few independent sources suggest I should lose it. “It’ll probably go away in a couple days,” I offered.
It didn’t go away. The “what ifs” started to eat holes in us. Claire made an appointment with an ear-nose-throat (ENT) specialist. They could see Jasper a week later. That week was a terrible week. Each time Jasper laughed you’d see that spot. So every time he laughed it was an awful mix of joy and terror.
The first ENT specialist was stumped; said he’d never seen anything like it in all his years. He suggested Jasper get an MRI and a CT scan immediately. Claire had a pretty strong hell-no reaction to that advice. She was not going to radiate our son without a second opinion.
jasper-johnson-and-troy.jpg
So we went to Rady’s, one of the best children’s hospitals on the planet. The ENT there was fantastic, but he was also stumped. He managed to get his finger in there before being bit, said it merely felt like the roof of Jasper’s mouth. But it wouldn’t budge and no part of it came off when scratched or prodded. Without causing the child undue stress, the best solution was to put Jasper under anesthesia to let the doctors get a good look at it, have it biopsied.
We agreed. At some point, you have to trust the smartest person in the room. Another stretch of days passed between then and the procedure. Each day, Claire aged 27 years. On the day of his procedure, it had been three weeks since this terrible white spot first entered our lives. The nurses and staff were kind and helpful, seemed to intuitively know how to prevent parents from free-falling into madness. We watched as nurses wheeled him into the operating room, which cratered us.
In the waiting room, I saw the other families. Nothing puts your own minor concerns into perspective like standing in the waiting room of a children’s hospital; some families here were going through things I don’t believe I could ever have the emotional fortitude to withstand.
After about ten minutes, the nurse emerged. The doctor was ready to see us. We were ushered into a consultation room. Longest few minutes of our lives. Finally, the doctor entered. He placed a specimen jar on the table. Inside, I could see the white spot.
“It’s a sticker,” he says.
Like a Scratch n Sniff. Or one that identifies “this apple is Gala.” It was the best sticker in the world. One that could fuse in a wet environment, and despite a very active young tongue wiggling about—managed to adhere perfectly to Jasper’s mouth and would not relinquish its job. After weeks of chewing and drinking, it didn’t even dissolve. Even if we had known it was a sticker, we would have had to put Jasper under, because, the doctor said, “it was stuck so well I had to pry it out a bit—it took some work.”
At the news, I start to laugh uncontrollably. The sheer relief. I look at Claire. She gives me a look that clearly states the time for laughing has not yet arrived. I cease and desist.
Later, in the car, she says, “I turned 100 today.”
Jasper was a little tired for the rest of the day, but fine and sticker-free. The next morning, completely happy and his normal self.
The point of this story is, at every step in this process, I was comforted by one thing. As a native San Diegan, seeing the national rankings and reports come out every year—I just know San Diego has some of the best doctors on the planet. Rady’s, Scripps, Palomar, Sharp, UCSD, Kaiser, Tri-City, docs with private practices. At every turn of this emotional roller coaster, I knew that Jasper’s health was safest right here.
The point of this story is also to say there is a sticker company we should all invest in—or burn to the ground.
Troy Johnson is the magazine’s award-winning food writer and humorist, and a long-standing expert on Food Network. His work has been featured on NatGeo, Travel Channel, NPR, and in Food Matters, a textbook of the best American food writing.
Renewable energy companies building hundreds of power plants. Biotech startups using artificial intelligence to create personalized medicine for children with rare diseases. Hospitality companies quietly powering thousands of local events. Consumer brands growing from beach-town startups into national businesses. These are the kinds of companies driving San Diego’s economy today, and the businesses recognized at this year’s San Diego Business Impact Awards offer a snapshot of where the region is headed.
Hosted July 23 by San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation (EDC) and JPMorganChase, the second annual awards event honored four local companies for innovation, growth, and economic impact. More than 100 nominations from San Diego’s middle-market businesses were reviewed by a 10-person judging committee, with winners selected across four categories: startup, early-stage innovator, rising star, and established heavyweight.
Two-time honoree Jimbo Someck, founder of Jimbo’s organic grocery stores, also joined the event for a fireside chat on buying local, supporting emerging brands, and giving back to the community.
“San Diego’s strength comes from its makers and builders—the resilient people who endure great risks and overcome obstacles to build and scale a company,” says Aaron Ryan, San Diego Region Manager and Middle Market Banking at JPMorganChase & Co. “These awards aren’t just recognition; they spotlight the talent, grit, and innovation shaping our region’s future. By celebrating those who create and build, we foster connections and fuel the growth that keeps San Diego thriving.”
Photo Credit: Matt Furman
Building the Infrastructure Behind Clean Energy
Heavyweight honoree SOLV Energy has grown alongside the country’s rapid investment in renewable power. “It’s an exciting time for SOLV Energy as we are experiencing significant growth,” says CEO George Hershman. “The business has doubled over the last year and has almost double-digit growth since its inception.”
The Rancho Bernardo-based company designs, builds, operates, and maintains utility-scale solar and energy storage facilities. Since its founding in 2008, SOLV Energy has built more than 500 power plants.
Growth has translated directly into hiring. About 200 employees work from the company’s local headquarters, including roughly 20 interns. “Our intern program is a big part of the way that we grow our workforce,” Hershman says. “Last year, 43 percent of our interns became full-time employees. We believe San Diego is a great community to build and grow a high-tech infrastructure and technology company because of the incredible workforce—the ability to attract top talent and draw from world-class universities.”
Photo Credit: Matt Furman
Developing Medicine One Patient at a Time
Startup honoree La Jolla Labs is tackling one of medicine’s biggest challenges by developing personalized RNA therapeutics for patients with rare diseases—many of them children with neurological disorders like ALS. Using proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning tools, the biotech company develops treatments tailored to each patient’s specific genetic mutation.
CEO Tamar Grossman says the recognition reflects how far the company has come despite limited resources. “We’re honored to be recognized for our ability to change and save patients’ lives and turn our lean startup into a clinical company with very minimal resources,” she says.
Grossman credits San Diego’s concentration of research institutions—including UC San Diego, the Salk Institute, and Scripps Research—with creating a pipeline of talent and collaboration. “San Diego is one of the world-leading centers for technology, genomics, and RNA therapeutics,” she says. “We have over 30 RNA therapeutics companies here, and we support each other and help with anything related to drug discovery.”
She says that collaborative spirit extends beyond formal partnerships. “You can walk around Torrey Pines, go into a café, and find colleagues from the industry and have an ad hoc conversation,” Grossman says. “That’s something very unique to San Diego.”
While Snake Oil Venue Company may not be a household name, chances are many San Diegans have attended one of its events. The early-stage innovator honoree has expanded from beverage catering and mixology consulting into venue management, operating Julep Venue in Mission Hills, Bramble Bay Venue in Imperial Beach, Vesper Venue, the Chapel at Liberty Station, and five outdoor venues throughout Liberty Station—more than 500,000 square feet of event space altogether.
“We do a lot of launch parties for corporations and new products,” says CEO Mike Esposito. “I really like working on the entrepreneur side of things, where new businesses are entering the San Diego market and looking to make a splash.”
Snake Oil has executed more than 16,000 events, employed more than 1,000 people, and partnered with more than 900 local vendors, including caterers, florists, photographers, entertainers, and other hospitality businesses. The company also works with many of San Diego’s nonprofits, museums, and cultural institutions. “We get to celebrate people’s most important moments,” Esposito says. “Whether that’s a wedding, celebration of life, or quinceañera, we’re fortunate to be involved in the community in so many different ways.”
Photo Credit: Matt Furman
Growing a Beach-Town Brand into a National Business
Rising star honoree ALOHA Collection is proof that a simple idea can grow into a thriving company. Founded by two roommates who wanted a better way to carry wet swimsuits after a day at the beach, the lifestyle brand has grown into a business while maintaining strong year-over-year growth.
Now headquartered in Carlsbad, ALOHA Collection employs more than 100 people and operates its California flagship store in Encinitas, which is slated for a remodel. With roots in Hawaii, the company is known for its lightweight, splash-proof travel bags that have become a familiar sight on beaches in San Diego and beyond.
“‘Aloha’ is part of our name, but it’s also how we move through the world,” says CEO Lynna Barnard. “It’s how we show up for people, the way we travel, the way we give back.” Since day one, the company has maintained a 5 percent giveback to Hawaii conservation efforts, contributing millions of dollars over the years.
“I think what’s so inspiring about ALOHA Collection, and the founders in particular, is when you dream big, those dreams can come true when you work hard and trust in the universe,” Barnard says. “It’s inspiring to be a role model for other people wanting to start businesses from humble beginnings. Start small and watch it grow.”
Together, businesses like these form a cornerstone of San Diego’s economy—not only through the jobs and revenue they generate—but through the local workers they hire, vendors they support, and investments they make in the region. Their growth doesn’t happen in isolation; it ripples outward, strengthening the broader business community and the people who call San Diego home.
For almost two decades, the San Diego County Medical Society (SDCMS) has worked collaboratively with San Diego Magazine to recognize physicians who are held in the highest regard by their peers. Votes and nominations are open to all physicians in San Diego. The voting physicians are asked to vote for physicians within and outside their […]
For almost two decades, the San Diego County Medical Society (SDCMS) has worked collaboratively with San Diego Magazine to recognize physicians who are held in the highest regard by their peers. Votes and nominations are open to all physicians in San Diego. The voting physicians are asked to vote for physicians within and outside their specialty to whom they would refer their friends and family. Through this process we have identified 730 physicians in 109 specialties.
In a synchronized effort, SDCMS confirmed every individual nominee’s Medical Board of California licensing and current practicing status. Through this exhaustive process, 730 physicians are being honored this year. Many of them have also been recognized for multiple years since we began publishing this list. (These physicians have the number of years they have been selected listed in brackets behind their name.)
Many superb physicians are not represented on this list. The selection criteria are strict, with only a few percent of physicians selected in each specialty. Many physicians received multiple votes from their peers but did not reach the threshold to be on the list. The best choice of physician for a patient should include many factors. All physicians in San Diego work collaboratively to provide the very best care for all of their patients.
We welcome and encourage all San Diego County physicians to participate in their county and state medical societies as we work toward the SDCMS vision: “Physicians United for a Healthy San Diego.” We appreciate the assistance of all of the physicians who voted, and we thank San Diego Magazine for their support.
Congratulations to all of our 2021 Top Doctor selectees! – Sergio Flores, MD; President 2021-2022 San Diego County Medical Society
ABDOMINAL SURGERY
Mark Christopher Takata, MD Scripps Clinic Medical Group 10666 N Torrey Pines Road La Jolla, CA 92037 (858) 554-8984
Balance starts with the basics, walking you through foundational tools like body scanning and breath focus in five in-depth sections. Once you master those techniques, you can personalize your practice to what works best for you with as little or as much guidance as you need.
Ever wanted Harry Styles to whisk you off into dreamland? The Calm app makes it happen. In addition to its extensive library of freeform practices—ideal for the more skilled users—you can also select a sleep session narrated by celebrities like Laura Dern, Matthew McConaughey, and the former One Direction star.
Headspace makes meditation look fun, with cool illustrations and an app that’s easy to navigate. Their library consists of a wide variety of meditative practices to address specific issues, including anxiety, stress, work, and kids. Session lengths vary, so you can sneak in a meditative moment even if you have only three minutes on hand.
The Chopra Center is making it easier than ever to take your self-care on the go. Their new app, launched in September, has guided meditation, helpful articles, and personalized tips for your personal growth and overall well-being.
Om No
Can’t get into meditation? Try mindfulness instead. The trick is to tackle one task at a time and to focus on being fully present in just that one task. Whether it’s washing your car, going for a walk, or sweeping the floors, you can still give your mind a break from the busyness without sitting down and saying “om.”
