Meet Dr. Jennifer Frost

Swope Health’s newest addition to healthcare services and leadership is Dr. Jennifer Frost, Medical Director of Wyandotte, West and Northland Clinics.

She brings a wealth of experience from social work to family medicine and women’s healthcare, from developing health policy to providing healthcare in underserved urban areas. In her new position, she wears two hats – seeing patients and driving improvements in healthcare at her clinics.

“Patients should know that I am really collaborative,” she said. “Medicine can be very paternalistic and we as doctors are often trained to be paternalistic. But I’m not. I will listen to patients and help them figure out what they are able to change and what they want to change. I will work with them to maximize their health.”

She is comfortable conversing with patients in Spanish, another example of her willingness to listen and work with patients on achieving health goals.

Dr. Frost is passionate about applying evidence-based care to all practices at the clinics.

“I want to make sure that everything we do is evidence-based,” she said. “That means making sure we provide care that actually improves outcomes and avoid doing things that can cause harm.”

In her administrative role, she focuses on improving efficiency in the clinics, starting with Wyandotte Clinic, where sometimes patients have to wait for walk-in service. She is working to add eye exams to support the large percentage of patients who have diabetes, which is a leading cause of blindness, kidney disease and limb amputation. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 30 million people in the U.S. have diabetes.

Another goal is to develop Behavioral Health Case Management services at Wyandotte and West Clinics, to help patients find the community resources and support they need.

Dr. Frost’s Journey to Swope Health

Dr. Frost is a native of Tacoma, Wash., and has lived in the Kansas City area for the last 16 years. Before joining Swope Health in January 2019, she had worked at the American Academy of Family Physicians where she developed clinical practice guidelines and health policy. Before that, she was the Director of Women’s Services and Associate Program Director for the Family Medicine Residency Program at Research Medical Center. She has also worked at Truman Lakewood as a staff physician.

Earlier, she worked at Arroya Vista Family Care, a federally qualified health center in Los Angeles that provided healthcare for an underserved urban community. She completed a fellowship in women’s health services at the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, Calif.; and her residency in family medicine at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, N.M.

She received her medical degree from Brown University in Rhode Island. She also studied pre-medicine at Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Penn.; and has a bachelor of arts from Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vt.

Dr. Frost and her husband, a professor of U.S. History at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, have two children. She enjoys photography and hiking and spends free time with family.