Selected by Ilana Jacqueline
Who decides which health information deserves your trust?
Social media has given patients unprecedented access to physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical professionals. It has also made it harder than ever to tell thoughtful health education apart from misinformation, oversimplification, and content designed primarily to go viral.
I’m Ilana Jacqueline — a patient advocate, author of Medical Gaslighting and Surviving and Thriving with an Invisible Chronic Illness, and a healthcare communications professional who has spent more than fifteen years working with patients, medical experts, and online health communities. I’ve watched medical social media grow from a niche corner of the internet into one of the first places patients turn to understand their health.
So I made the list I wish every patient had.
How this list was made
Follower counts didn’t get anyone on this list. Neither did going viral.
I looked for people who cite evidence. Who admit when the answer is complicated. Who don’t sell fear as education. Who don’t make patients feel stupid. And who know the difference between sharing information and giving strangers medical advice.
These are 20 medical voices I trust enough to put my name behind.
A note on language: you’ll hear people call this world “medical influencers.” I’ve worked in that industry for over a decade, and the people below are something more specific — clinicians and health educators who treat your attention as a responsibility, not a commodity.
WOMEN’S HEALTH, FERTILITY & PREGNANCY
Karen Tang, MD, MPH
Gynecologist & Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgeon · @karentangmd
Dr. Karen Tang is a board-certified gynecologist and fellowship-trained minimally invasive gynecologic surgeon, and the founder of Thrive Gynecology, where she specializes in endometriosis, fibroids, and chronic pelvic pain. She is the author of It’s Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health (but Were Never Told).
WHY SHE MADE THE TRUST LIST: She takes symptoms women are routinely told to tolerate and explains exactly what deserves a closer look.
Lora Shahine, MD, FACOG
Reproductive Endocrinologist · @drlorashahine
Dr. Lora Shahine is a double board-certified reproductive endocrinologist and OB/GYN at Pacific NW Fertility in Seattle, a clinical associate professor at the University of Washington, and the author of Not Broken: An Approachable Guide to Miscarriage and Recurrent Pregnancy Loss. She hosts the Brave & Curious podcast and has published more than 75 peer-reviewed papers.
WHY SHE MADE THE TRUST LIST: She talks about miscarriage and infertility without shame, false promises, or a product to sell — and calls out the “fertility wellness” industry that preys on people who are grieving.
Staci Tanouye, MD, FACOG
Gynecologist · @dr.staci.t
Dr. Staci Tanouye is a Mayo Clinic-trained, board-certified gynecologist in private practice in Florida and one of the first OB/GYNs to go viral teaching young people about reproductive health. She serves as a medical advisor for the period-tracking app Flo and has built a massive audience demystifying everything from pelvic exams to predatory “feminine hygiene” marketing.
WHY SHE MADE THE TRUST LIST: She puts accurate, shame-free sexual health education in front of young people before misinformation gets there first.
Tracy Shevell, MD, FACOG
Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialist · @tracyshevellmd
Dr. Tracy Shevell is a high-risk OB/GYN with maternal-fetal medicine fellowship training from Columbia and 25 years in academic medicine, including 17 years as director of perinatal ultrasound at Stamford Health. She is the founder of Blue Moon Perinatal, a telehealth practice supporting patients through pregnancy complications and perinatal anxiety.
WHY SHE MADE THE TRUST LIST: She brings clinical rigor to the scariest pregnancies without ever losing sight of the person having one. Her signature message — “You’re not too much. You’re not broken. And it’s not just anxiety” — is one every dismissed patient deserves to hear.
Danielle Jones, MD
OB/GYN · @mamadoctorjones
Dr. Danielle Jones — known to over a million subscribers as Mama Doctor Jones — is a board-certified OB/GYN who has been creating evidence-based reproductive health content since long before it was a career path. Now practicing in New Zealand, she’s best known for her judgment-free teen sex education and her careful, citation-heavy debunking of pregnancy and birth misinformation.
WHY SHE MADE THE TRUST LIST: She corrects dangerous misinformation without ever mocking the people who believed it — and shows her sources every time.
Fran Haydanek, DO, FACOG
OB/GYN · @pagingdrfran
Dr. Fran Haydanek is a board-certified OB/GYN practicing at Rochester Regional Health, with clinical interests spanning high-risk obstetrics, hormone management, and minimally invasive surgery. She’s best known for building and sharing a public list of roughly 3,000 OB/GYNs willing to perform tubal sterilization regardless of a patient’s age, marital status, or number of children.
WHY SHE MADE THE TRUST LIST: She didn’t just talk about reproductive autonomy — she built a tool thousands of patients have used to find a doctor who will listen.
SERIOUS ILLNESS, AGING & END OF LIFE
Penny Hawkins Smith, BSN, RN, CHPN
Certified Hospice & Palliative Care Nurse · @hospicenursepenny
Penny Hawkins Smith — Hospice Nurse Penny to millions of followers — is a nationally certified hospice and palliative care nurse with 20 years of hospice experience, and the author of Influencing Death: Reframing Dying for Better Living. She delivers what she calls “hospice straight talk”: honest, unflinching education about what dying actually looks like.
WHY SHE MADE THE TRUST LIST: She explains the thing we’re all most afraid of without euphemism or exploitation — and busts the myths that keep families from getting hospice care when they need it most.
Matthew Tyler, MD
Hospice & Palliative Medicine Physician · @howtotrainyourdoctor
Dr. Matthew Tyler is a double board-certified internal medicine and hospice & palliative medicine physician and the creator of How to Train Your Doctor, a platform that teaches patients and caregivers facing serious illness how to advocate for the care they want. His Goals of Care Conversation Starter gives families a concrete way to begin the conversations most of us avoid.
WHY HE MADE THE TRUST LIST: He hands patients the exact words to use in the hardest conversations of their lives — and demystifies palliative care for the people who need it most.
Kelly Cheung, MD
Internal Medicine · Geriatrics & Palliative Care, UCLA · @kellytakesmedicine
Dr. Kelly Cheung is a board-certified internal medicine physician completing fellowship training in geriatrics and palliative care at UCLA, a path she chose after watching doctors dismiss her grandfather’s symptoms as “just aging.” Her content destigmatizes palliative care, supports family caregivers, and cuts through the hype around longevity supplements with actual evidence.
WHY SHE MADE THE TRUST LIST: She refuses to let “it’s just aging” be the end of any patient’s conversation — including yours.
THE FRONT LINES: EVERYDAY & EMERGENCY MEDICINE
Mike Varshavski, DO
Family Medicine Physician · @doctor.mike
Dr. Mike Varshavski is a board-certified family medicine physician practicing in New Jersey while running the largest medical channel on YouTube, with over 14 million subscribers. His mantra — medicine should be “evidence-based, not eminence-based” — anchors a decade of myth-busting, media literacy, and public health education delivered with disarming humor.
WHY HE MADE THE TRUST LIST: He commands the biggest audience in medical media and still says the three words most of that industry won’t: “We don’t know.”
Bayo Curry-Winchell, MD, MS
Family Medicine & Urgent Care Physician · @doctor.bayo
Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell is a board-certified family medicine physician, urgent care medical director in Reno, and founder of Beyond Clinical Walls, a video series and podcast bringing health education outside the exam room. Her TEDx talk on the Black maternal mortality crisis has reached millions, and her content consistently teaches patients how to advocate for themselves in medical settings.
WHY SHE MADE THE TRUST LIST: She teaches patients how to speak up and be heard — especially those whose concerns medicine most often dismisses. Her work on Clinicians Who Care offers recommended doctors who have earned the seal of approval from their most vulnerable patients.
Sarah G. Jamison, MD
Emergency Medicine Physician · @dr.sarah_jam
Dr. Sarah Jamison is a board-certified emergency medicine physician in the Bronx who received an Essential Heroes Award from Essence Magazine for her COVID-19 frontline work. Beyond her plain-language health education online, she founded a mentorship program giving underrepresented medical students early exposure to emergency medicine.
WHY SHE MADE THE TRUST LIST: She translates the ER for the rest of us — clear, culturally competent, and never condescending.
GUT, ALLERGIES & THE PHARMACY COUNTER
Austin Chiang, MD, MPH
Gastroenterologist · @austinchiangmd
Dr. Austin Chiang is a board-certified gastroenterologist and advanced endoscopist, an associate professor at Sidney Kimmel Medical College, the author of Gut: An Owner’s Guide, and the first-ever Chief Medical Social Media Officer at a U.S. hospital system. As founding president of the Association for Healthcare Social Media, he has done as much as anyone to define what responsible clinician content looks like.
WHY HE MADE THE TRUST LIST: He doesn’t just debunk colon cleanses and detox scams — he built the professional infrastructure for doctors to fight misinformation responsibly.
Benjamin Schmidt, MD
Gastroenterologist · @docschmidtig
Dr. Benjamin Schmidt — Doc Schmidt to over a million followers — is a gastroenterologist in St. Louis whose comedy sketches about medical training and hospital culture have earned hundreds of millions of views. Underneath the humor is a persistent, earnest campaign for colon cancer screening and honest GI patient education.
WHY HE MADE THE TRUST LIST: The jokes get you in the door; the colonoscopy talk might save your life.
Zachary Rubin, MD
Pediatric Allergist & Immunologist · @rubin_allergy
Dr. Zachary Rubin is a double board-certified pediatrician and allergist/immunologist practicing in the Chicago area, with more than four million followers across platforms, and the author of All About Allergies. His calm, direct-to-camera explainers cover allergies, asthma, eczema, and food allergy — and consistently correct viral misinformation without drama.
WHY HE MADE THE TRUST LIST: He corrects allergy misinformation the way medicine should sound: calm, clear, and completely without fear-mongering.
Ethan Melillo, PharmD
Pharmacist & Certified Diabetes Educator · @millennialrx
Dr. Ethan Melillo is a pharmacist and certified diabetes outpatient educator who has been in pharmacies since he was 17, and whose Millennial Rx content covers medications, side effects, drug interactions, vaccines, and over-the-counter guidance. He guest lectures at pharmacy schools nationwide and is one of the most visible advocates for his profession online.
WHY HE MADE THE TRUST LIST: He answers the medication questions people are too embarrassed — or too rushed — to ask at the counter.
TRUTH-TELLERS & PATIENT CHAMPIONS
Uché Blackstock, MD
Emergency Medicine Physician & Health Equity Advocate · @ucheblackstockmd
Dr. Uché Blackstock is a Harvard-trained emergency medicine physician, founder of Advancing Health Equity, and author of the New York Times bestseller Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine. She and her twin sister, with their late mother, form the first Black mother-daughter legacy to graduate Harvard Medical School.
WHY SHE MADE THE TRUST LIST: She connects the individual experience of being dismissed by medicine to the history and systems that produce it — and demands better from both.
Will Flanary, MD
Ophthalmologist & Medical Comedian · @docglauc
Dr. Will Flanary — better known as Dr. Glaucomflecken — is a practicing ophthalmologist in Oregon whose one-man comedy universe of 40+ recurring characters satirizes everything from specialty stereotypes to prior authorization. A two-time cancer survivor who also survived a sudden cardiac arrest (thanks to CPR from his wife Kristin), his viral “30 Days of US Healthcare” series turned comedy into some of the sharpest insurance-industry criticism in medicine.
WHY HE MADE THE TRUST LIST: He uses comedy to expose the healthcare dysfunction patients are told to simply accept — and he’s lived both sides of the hospital bed.
Erin Nance, MD
Orthopedic Hand Surgeon · @doctorerinnance
Dr. Erin Nance is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon, fellowship-trained in hand surgery at the Hospital for Special Surgery, practicing in New York City — one of the roughly 6% of orthopedic surgeons who are women. Her serialized medical mystery storytelling, and her book Little Miss Diagnosed, center the stories of patients (especially women) whose symptoms were dismissed until someone finally looked closer.
WHY SHE MADE THE TRUST LIST: She turned stories of dismissed and misdiagnosed women into education that changes how patients walk into their next appointment.
Tony Adkins, PA-C
Pediatric Neurosurgery Physician Assistant · @t_malone3
Tony Adkins is a U.S. Army veteran and physician assistant in pediatric neurosurgery at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, where he became known worldwide as the “Dancing Doc” for dancing at the bedsides of seriously ill children. It started with a young patient recovering from brain surgery who hadn’t smiled in days — until he danced.
WHY HE MADE THE TRUST LIST: He’s proof that the most advanced skill in medicine is still human connection — and that healing includes joy.
About the Author of the Trust List
I’m Ilana Jacqueline. I’ve spent more than fifteen years as a patient advocate and healthcare communications professional, working with patient communities, medical experts, and health brands to figure out one thing: who patients can actually trust.
I’m the author of Medical Gaslighting: How to Get the Care You Deserve in a System that Makes You Fight For Your Life and Surviving and Thriving with an Invisible Chronic Illness . I live with chronic illness myself, which means I don’t evaluate medical content as a marketer — I evaluate it as a patient whose life depends on getting good information.
The Trust List is my answer to the question I’m asked most: “Who should I actually be following?”
Want to stay on top of the voices in healthcare you can trust? Follow me on Instagram at @Ilana_Jacqueline and visit ilanajacqueline.com — for my annual Trust List selections, patient advocacy tools, and self-advocacy scripts, all in one place.
📖 Medical Gaslighting is available wherever books are sold.
For Trust List honorees
If you’re one of the 20 voices on this year’s list: congratulations — and thank you for what you put into the world. You’ve earned the right to say so. Download the official Trust List 2026 badge to display on your website, linked back to this page.
The Trust List is an independent editorial project. No one paid to be included, no one was notified in exchange for promotion, and no featured voice endorsed this list’s creator. Selections reflect the personal and professional judgment of Ilana Jacqueline. Interested in being on the 2027 Trust List? You can not apply, pay for, or enter to be selected. Do your best work in enhancing the lives of patients through social media– and I’ll find you.
THE TRUST LIST · 2026 · Selected by Ilana Jacqueline