After four years leading Medicaid expansion and other key health initiatives as Louisiana’s secretary of health, Dr. Rebekah Gee (M.D. ’02) was appalled by trends showing “moms and kids were getting unhealthier and unhealthier every year”—often because they couldn’t access primary care.
The realization planted the seed for Nest Health, the 68-employee primary care company Dr. Gee launched in 2022. Now serving about 30,000 families across Louisiana and Arizona covered by Medicaid, Nest aims to improve medical, social and behavioral health trajectories of underserved families with children by combining in-home clinician visits with 24/7 virtual care access. It’s the first such clinical model of its kind, says Dr. Gee, who was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2017 and is also the recipient of a 2025 Special Achievement Award from the Weill Cornell Medical College Alumni Association.
“We’re not a one-and-done solution once we enroll a family,” she says, noting that the model is designed to address barriers to health care access such as transportation difficulties and patient distrust that discourages some from seeking care. “We’re there to assist them until the children are out of the nest.”
Leaping from the public to private sector has brought challenges, but also freedom from political volatility and funding instability. Already turning a profit, Nest is proof that public health can succeed within a business framework, Dr. Gee says, and she aspires to launch Nest in all 50 states in order to serve even more women and children.
“There is no partisan debate over whether we ought to have healthy moms and kids in America,” she says. “It’s a nice space to navigate in.”
Dr. Gee credits her time at Weill Cornell with indelibly shaping both her clinical path and her broader mission. Recalling a close-knit, supportive environment and strong mentors that made her feel at home, she also tips her hat to the hands-on community training and pioneering Medicine, Patients and Society course—which illuminated the social roots of health inequities—for propelling her career. Weill Cornell Medicine/Impact/Maureen Salamon
Dr. Gee can’t wait to return to campus in the fall to accept her Special Achievement Award at Reunion – and hopes to spread some gratitude in the process.
“Weill Cornell was way ahead of its time” by training budding physicians to view care through a health equity lens, she says. “It will be a joy to reconnect with some of the people who taught me and supported my career.”