Wellness Doctrine
Physician finds new path to pain management
By Cecily Hastings
Photography by Aniko Kiezel
April 2025
Dr. Scott Fishman could have retired last year. Instead, he opened a new door to continue his work in pain management.
Fishman became executive director of the UC Davis Office of Wellness Education. He’s the Jacquelyn S. Anderson endowed chair of wellness for the organization. He’s also a professor emeritus for UC Davis Health Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine.
“Jacquelyn Anderson was a patient of mine who had cancer, and when she passed away, her husband Jim left us a gift of $5 million that founded this organization,” Fishman says.
Fishman worked in pain management for 35 years, starting after medical school at University of Massachusetts.
“In my practice as a pain specialist, it became clear to me that I was treating a lot of people with a chronic illness who could have been helped to prevent illness in the first place,” he says. “Many are living with a chronic illness that they didn’t necessarily have to live with. The best care is helping people avoid care in the first place.”
Fishman realized that while our system is called “health care,” it’s really “disease response.”
“We’re sitting around waiting for people to get ill and then come to us,” he says. “But the Hippocratic Oath doctors take, and the true mission of health care, is much broader than that. Yet the economics of our medical care has sadly narrowed us to only a disease response role.”
Few patients are happy with volume-based trends in health services. And almost everyone agrees with the need to tackle preventable illness.
“Preventable chronic illness is costing our country trillions of dollars a year—much of which is probably avoidable—if we practiced lifestyle intervention earlier,” Fishman says.
He estimates about 50% of cancers are probably preventable through lifestyle choices. This suggests people need more information on wellness.
“But in a free society like ours, there’s no regulation on wellness information,” Fishman says. “And no one agrees on what it means exactly. And as a physician, I was never able to get paid to help my patients with prevention. That system needs changing.”
Fishman believes there’s probably no university better prepared than UC Davis to address the issue of wellness. It touches biology, psychology, sociology, environmental science and medicine.
“UC Davis can use every aspect as a world leader in so many areas,” he says.
His new team will provide wellness information on a website in magazine-style articles, video and audio productions, and newsletters.
At the wellness education office, Fishman advocates safe use of pain medicines and lectures on pain-related topics. He serves as a consultant for federal agencies, works with the American Academy of Medicine and does media interviews. He’s testified before state legislatures and Congress.
“The bottom line is that as far as I know, we’re the only office of wellness education in a traditional American school of medicine,” he says.
Fishman has written several books, including “The War on Pain,” “Listening to Pain” and “Responsible Opioid Prescribing.”
A cyclist and exercise enthusiast, Fishman hopes his new role will bring more balance to his own wellness journey. He and his wife Bianca live in Sierra Oaks and love to travel, experience art and food, and enjoy time with their adult children.
Here’s hoping Fishman is as successful in his new wellness education work as he was in pain medicine.
Cecily Hastings can be reached at cecily@insidepublications.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
