Colorado Obesity Medicine Fellowship

Dr. David Saxon

Dr. Elizabeth Thomas

Dr. Megan Kelsey

Dr. Melanie Cree-Green

Dr. Johnathan Schoen

Dr. John Michael Taormina (he/him/his) is a board-certified family medicine physician who is joining us from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He completed his medical degree at the University of Pittsburgh and his residency training at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) St. Margaret hospital. He is passionate about prevention of excessive weight gain, interventions to promote safe and medically-appropriate weight loss, and management of medical problems associated with excess weight.

He began his interest in obesity prevention in 2018 as a student intern of the Epidemiology Elective Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). During this time, he worked on a project in the Obesity Prevention and Control branch of the CDC evaluating key components of clinical-community linkages to promote healthy behaviors in racial and ethnic minority children. He continued that work during residency as the lead investigator of his family health center’s Childhood Obesity in Primary Care quality improvement project, hosted through the American Academy of Pediatrics. This role provided invaluable experience designing and evaluating clinic workflow to facilitate discussions about healthy behaviors and weight during well-child visits. He completed an area of concentration in obesity medicine during his residency training and provided comprehensive weight management services to a cohort of patients in his primary care office throughout his final year of training. He is excited to complete his fellowship training in obesity medicine at the University of Colorado to further develop his skills in encouraging behavior change, expand his knowledge of and experience with weight loss medications, and to foster collaboration with other specialists to provide the best care for patients.

As a family physician, Dr. Taormina cares for patients of all ages, racial and ethnic groups, sexual orientations, and gender identities. His clinical and research interests are in developing public health interventions to prevent and manage obesity; investigating effective weight management strategies in adolescents with obesity using family-centered interventions, weight loss medications, and bariatric surgery; and developing culturally sensitive, comprehensive, and effective strategies for weight management for transgender and gender-diverse individuals with overweight and obesity. He collaborates with the lifestyle medicine clinics at the University of Colorado Children’s Hospital and sees adult patients through the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center, Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center and through collaboration with the UCHealth Integrated Transgender Program.

In his free time, you can find him perusing local farmer’s markets, cooking, watching musical theatre at DPAC, hiking with his partner, or bouncing around the Denver and Aurora areas eating ethnic food.

Dr. Gessa Suboc is a board-certified family medicine physician who is joining us from the suburbs of Chicago. She completed her residency at the University of Chicago (Northshore) and earned her medical degree from Ross University School of Medicine. Her special interests lie with Obesity Medicine, Integrative Medicine, and Sports Medicine. However, she particularly enjoys finding ways to combine the three focus areas to best cater to her patient’s health and wellness. 

As part of her training at the University of Chicago Family Medicine residency program, she focused her education on obesity medicine by completing a dedicated Obesity Medicine Track. This learning track provided her the opportunity to work under the mentorship of experienced obesity medicine physicians. Further, this track enabled her to work with, and understand the importance of, a multidisciplinary team approach as it relates to creating comprehensive weight management plans with patients. Aside from her dedicated training in the field of obesity medicine, Dr. Suboc’s background as a primary care physician has shown her the significance of counseling her patients through sustainable lifestyle changes; particularly to aid in the treatment of comorbid conditions, including hypertension, diabetes, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, etc. Moreover, her passions with Integrative Medicine and Sports Medicine have taught her to value and incorporate the concepts of “food as medicine” and “exercise as medicine” into her daily practice.

Dr. Suboc is looking forward to building upon her knowledge of evidence-based treatment of obesity, becoming involved in ongoing nutrition and obesity research, and continuing to practice techniques to promote sustainable patient lifestyle and behavior changes. Most of all, she is excited about learning the stories of her patients’ journeys, praising their triumphs, and ultimately collaborating with them to help them overcome the barriers needed for continued success. When she is not practicing medicine, she enjoys spending time with her family, salsa dancing, singing karaoke, hiking with her puppy, Winne, and exploring new restaurants with her husband

Dr. Lisa Kisling Thompson, DO, MPH, DipABLM, is a Preventive Medicine trained physician, completing her residency at the University of Colorado in 2020. She is passionate about disease prevention at both the individual and population levels and utilizes her training in Lifestyle Medicine to leverage nutrition, physical activity, healthy sleep, and stress management to promote wellness in her patients. She is knowledgeable about behavior change and has pursued additional training in Motivational Interviewing to effectively aid patients in making sustainable, healthy, life modifications. Lisa continues her training with a fellowship in Obesity Medicine focusing on evidence-based and sustainable interventions to reverse obesity and obesity-related comorbidities including diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, sleep disorders, and more. In doing so, she hopes to improve the health and reduce the vulnerability of this patient population.

Lisa’s three-year residency in Preventive Medicine prepared her well to tackle disease burdens at a population level utilizing her public health training in epidemiology. She is capable in program development, using real time data-driven analytics to improve healthcare implementation on a systems level. Her ability to influencing patient- and population-level health delivery has proven successful in various healthcare settings including Rocky Mountain Regional VA and Denver Health.

Lisa serves as the founder of the University of Colorado’s Lifestyle Medicine Interest Group where she continues to promote evidence-based methods for whole-body care in medical education. She sits as a co-chair of the planning committee for the American College of Preventive Medicine, is a Donald A. Pegg award recipient, Diplomate for the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, consultant for Colorado’s CURE Opioid consortium, and passionate clinician. In her free time, she can be found in her art studio painting, scrapbooking, or sewing and enjoys hiking with her husband, wakeboarding, kick boxing.