“I went to Yale for undergrad,” Rodriguez said. “And then I went to medical school at UW-Madison. That’s what actually brought me to Wisconsin. I was going to do four years and then go back to LA where I grew up. But God had other plans and I did residency. I was part of the first class of emergency medical residents at the university. I became chief resident my final year. And then they hired me right out of residency to be the assistant program director for the Emergency Medicine Program. I was one of the youngest at the time. And I helped them grow the emergency department. At that time, it was kind of community-based, the Emergency Department program. Now it is an academic national powerhouse. For me the Department of Medicine resulted in the Department of Emergency Medicine. I got to teach and educate residents and recruit people here and develop programs.”

As Rodriguez progressed in his career, he noticed that there were built-in advantages for certain people.

“We were seeing that some people were getting treated differently because they came in as VIPs or executives through executive programs. And then we were also seeing a lot of professional athletes who were like the world was given to them. Seeing the difference between that world and the emergency department, we wondered how we could create a space where we could get people to think differently about their health. How could we think about preventative health and the optimization of health rather than just fixing people or waiting for people to show up at the ER.”

While the needs of people in a certain place in society would receive ther best treatment they could receive, Rodriguez and his wife were concerned about the long-term health prospects of economically-challenged people.

“My wife and I left academics and created Carbon World Health a few years before wellness was the thing,” Rodriguez said, “At that time, everyone thought, ‘You’re crazy. It’s going to fail.’ But we wanted to create it for each other. Fast forward, now we have two locations, one in Madison and one in Sun Prairie. We’re about to open a third one in the Dells.”

In essence, Rodriguez and his wife were concerned about equity in health outcomes.

“In my mind, we always say, ‘Every person who comes in to the emergency room deserves my full attention, deserves to be treated equally,’” Rodriguez said. “With our society at times, you get a call. ‘Hey, it’s a VIP. Hey, he’s a donor. Hey, he’s on the board.’ One of the reasons I went into emergency medicine was because truly in my mind, the only department of medicine or the structure of medicine where you are always on, we are never closed and we see anyone regardless of whether they have insurance, regardless of immigration status, regardless of whether or not they can afford it. But to me I take that as a privilege where they depend on me. I have to step up for all of them. And every patient I see, I do that.”

And it led Rodriguez to wonder how he could level the playing field, how he could he could help people not need to depend on the emergency room as their primary source of healthcare.

“‘What if we reached out to them sooner,’” Rodriguez asked. “’What if they had more access? What if we could change their way of thinking about health before they even meet me in the emergency department?’”

Rodriguez and his wife founded Carbon World Health. It combines several aspects of healthcare into a continuum of care.

“What we do is we combine for the first time under one roof all of these different silos,” Rodriguez said. “Every room in our business — and it was back in the day — it could have been its own business. That’s the problem for decent healthcare. For example, I always talk about insanity. What is insanity? People always say. It’s trying to do the same thing over and over expecting different results. I would say that insanity is knowing what we need to do about our health and we don’t do it. And with that premise is, ‘Whose fault is it?’ And a lot of times, it’s just the set-up where one, we don’t try to educate people. Two, we don’t learn about fitness. We don’t learn about nutrition. And as doctors, we just tell people that you have to do it without guiding them. And the third component becomes if you have never seen what health looks like — whether it’s because you don’t have money, you’re too busy, whatever the case might be — you don’t know.”

And so at Carbon World Health, Rodriguez and his wife provide their clients a continuum of health that will lead to better, sustained health in the long run.

“At Carbon, we call it a one-stop shop for health, beauty and fitness,” Rodriguez said. “With Carbon, our idea was to show you that health matters, show you that you could have a million problems, so you have a health problem and it becomes your only problem. It’s also that you are able to do it with small little habits, how to go about doing it and implementing it. Why should you care? And why you shouldn’t just decide and say, ‘Hey, I’m not broken, therefore I’m healthy.’ We wouldn’t do that in any other side of our lives. We wouldn’t talk like that in our careers, finances or relationships, but somehow, we do it for health.”

Rodriguez and his wife have complementary skill sets that allow them to provide this continuum of healthcare.

“My wife was in radiology in the hospital,” Rodriguez said. “Prior to that, she got to work in nutritional spaces and fitness spaces. So her passion was always she lives the part for sure. No matter where we go, she’s doing right and keeping me in line. She loves working out. She loves eating well. But most importantly, she teaches people that they can do it. It’s a lot easier to implement in your life. You just need some guidance. She also developed this love for beauty, which is why she does a lot of beauty treatments. And that was the one thing. If you feel great and you are healthy, then you are probably living the life that you want to live. And why not have it under one roof? And that’s what we have done. It’s pretty amazing.”

At Carbon, Rodriguez and his wife seek to empower their clients in taking ownership of their healthcare. They go with the flow of the client.

“At Carbon, there is the circle of what you want as a patient,” Rodriguez said. “There’s a circle of what I think should happen. And then there’s the circle of what my biology should be. We live in the intersection of all three of them. It’s called precision health or preventative health where now anyone can come to Carbon for the particular reason that they want. And it’s our job to show them, ‘Hey these are the other things that you should combine to be optimal in your health.’ And it doesn’t have to be zero to one hundred. I use this journey of health at Carbon where it’s going to be your future. Let’s say you have a car. It doesn’t matter what car you have. You need certain parts for that car. You need tires, brakes and a steering wheel. Once you have that, we can just say, ‘Okay, what kind of car do you want to be, one geared for performance?’  Finally, to drive, if you have your dream car, you’re going to treat it differently than a car that you have just to survive. And that’s your body. You want to thrive in it.”

Rodriguez and his wife Ashley have dreams of taking Carbon to the national level.

“We can take the idea and make more locations like this,” Rodriguez said. “Two, when I was an academic, we spoke a lot about education throughout academics. But I took a pause for the business. But now, I’m on a speaking journey. Maybe it’s a couple things. One, as physicians, we know what is broken. I know we’ve been beat down. But can we take an active role taking back ownership and advocating for our system, our vision and our career? And then two, to truly try to get back onto the page of giving ownership to every patient. We interact with them once per month, once every couple of months. They really have to take ownership of their health. And I tell them that if they strategize with the same strategies they would for their career, finances or relationship, their health would be different. We just have to teach them that is the point.”

Rodriguez is truly honored by the Latino Professionals Association, an organization that he has been engaged with over the years.

“It was truly an honor,” Rodriguez said about the Yo Soy honor. “It was one of the first organizations when I left academics and faced a whole different world that I turned to for a sense of community. I also helped lead it. I was on their board when it was first developing. We did full circle. To see what they created and accomplished, it’s been an honor. It feels like a solid recognition coming from the vote of your own people. It was great. And it’s a testimony. If I can do it, anyone can do it too. It’s an organization that provides mentorship outside of just friendship and culture and professionalism and help to navigate those waters so that you can accomplish what you want.”

Dr. Nestor Rodriguez has stayed true to his values when his dreams were shaped by the rough life around him. And through his work, he is making the dreams of others possible with good health.