PHOTO: Gillian Ehrlich

Gillian Ehrlich


Gillian Ehrlich's mission is to make holistic health our common ground in medicine and improve universal access to primary care. This vision of health evolved over a decade spent working mainly with non-profit organizations in direct-service level positions. Beginning with the Pacific Crest Outward Bound School and other wilderness programs, she shared with adolescents the elements required for healthy living: food, shelter, community, exercise, purpose and competency, joy and fresh air. Onto this foundation, she added a season of growing organic food for 25 families in southwest Ohio and functioning as a teacher and domestic violence counselor on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in Lake Andes, South Dakota. Health has been the consistent thread and nursing became the venue for the life-long application of these skills and values.

Gillian graduated with a BA/BS degree from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and a BSN from Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She balances her understanding of allopathic medicine with 1000+ hours of Ayurvedic training with Dr. Vasant Lad in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Pune, India. She emerged with sound convictions that health and contentment are possible for each of us, that authentic relationships and a clean environment account for much of this, and that we start healing from whatever shoes in which we currently stand.

Gillian currently works as an RN at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Washington and is studying towards a Doctorate of Nursing Practice as a Family Nurse Practitioner at the University of Washington. Her focus is relationship-centered care, innovative health delivery systems and integrating complementary and alternative medicine into public health primary care.

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