Dr. Ariel White ’04 specializes in helping patients on the cusp of adulthood.

Kids today—they’ve changed. Gen Z and the teens who follow them are more open-minded and social than earlier generations, more gender-fluid, more tech savvy, and more prone to serious anxiety. They’ve likely been shamed or bullied online, they’ve spent years practicing active-shooter drills, and they face college admissions processes that are more competitive and ultimately more expensive than ever before. Yet, today’s young people feel compelled to empathy, service, and activism like no generation in decades.

Physician Ariel White ’04 knows all this. Wise enough to read between the lines that the youngest adults sometimes hide behind, the associate medical director at American University (AU) is still young enough to have won the confidence of students dealing with unplanned pregnancy, suicidal ideation, opioid addiction (she has a Drug Enforcement Administration waiver to prescribe the opiate treatment buprenorphine), and more.

Of course, she also deals with the more everyday reasons why college kids show up at the health clinic: They have migraines, flu, mononucleosis, a sprained wrist from a bike accident. But college students are forever new to the basics of adult life, whether it’s managing insurance or navigating an ever-changing healthcare system—let alone understanding their own bodies, emotions, relationships, and decision-making abilities. “Ariel has a gift for connecting with students quickly, and she really gets them,” says AU Clinic Director David Reitman. “She has also brought a lot of innovations to the clinic.”

White’s attuned senses, for instance, led to AU’s eating disorders program—part of American University’s Center for Well-Being Programs and Psychological Services—which has quickly become a model for healthcare on other campuses. Soon after White started at AU in October 2022, an athlete came to see her about a seemingly unrelated matter. “Dr. White’s antennae went up,” says Associate Athletic Trainer Kari Fernandez. “She knew this athlete was suffering from an eating disorder.”

Most college sports programs don’t have a true plan of care for such cases, Fernandez explains. AU does, now, because White has compiled a team—including herself, a dietician, a mental health professional, the athletic training staff—to help each student create a plan for recovery and develop long-term healthy habits. Sending off one successful patient recently to study abroad made White emotional. For the student, a major trip like that “hadn’t been an option before” treatment. These are complicated cases that can last for years, she says. Fernandez agrees and is grateful for the support: “By relying on Dr. White’s expertise, we can be a lot more confident that we’re providing for the safety of our people first, and athletes second.”

In another example, beginning in spring 2024, AU students received access to the semipermanent contraceptive Nexplanon. “Students are thrilled,” Reitman says. “Without her, it wouldn’t be happening.” Previous efforts had run into insurance roadblocks, but White researched a path forward that no one else had yet found. Her determination was based on a belief that reproductive health is healthcare. “People use contraception for all kinds of reasons,” she says, “not just to prevent pregnancy.” For example, doctors prescribe birth control medications to treat endometriosis, cramps, acne, migraines, and ovarian cancer. The new offering at AU was one of several student suggestions, White says (along with more comfortable gowns for EKGs and less emphasis on weigh-ins).

White also introduced AU to trauma-informed-care concepts: “That’s something she’s changed about the way we do things at the health center,” says Reitman. In cases where occasional patients—and patient behaviors—have been labeled “difficult,” there has been a 21st-century movement to reframe the care approach, to de-escalate, and to realize that some patients may push back on requests or resist answering questions because of previous bad experiences. 

Guest speakers on the topic and therapeutic debriefings have helped make the shift positive for staff.

“Instead of ‘What’s wrong with you?’ It’s more ‘What has happened to you?’” White explains. “Especially if kids are in a high-risk situation, we don’t want our work with them to contribute to their stress. We try to provide as much choice around interactions as possible.” For example, healthcare providers can allow room for timid patients to answer sensitive questions over time, or they can suggest that a nonessential test be handled later.

White has brought these lessons to Children’s National Hospital as well, where she spent a two-year fellowship before serving as adolescent medicine physician, devoting herself to teens who often were underserved or had complex medical needs. “She comes back several times a year to teach trainees and other providers on the college landscape about reproductive health rights and access, and eating disorders,” says Anisha Abraham, division chief of adolescent medicine at Children’s. “What is integral to working with young people is getting them to feel comfortable with you, getting them to open up and, in time, to trust enough to talk about challenging issues,” says Abraham. “She has that true passion to empower them and make sure they do well.”

White may be roughly twice her patients’ age, but she’s younger than their parents. She lives in DC’s Adams Morgan, knows the slang (pretty much), and taught herself custom cookie decoration during the pandemic. She had planned to remain at Children’s but saw the AU opening as a “unique opportunity”—patients fresh from home, navigating healthcare on their own; foreign students new to entire medical concepts; and ultimately, young people all in the midst of developing their own psyches and identities. “It sounded really cool to help them learn to advocate for themselves in healthcare,” she says, “especially in the areas of reproductive health and gender-affirming care.”

After graduating from Elon University with a biology major, she attended the University of Maryland Medical School. Now, with board certifications in pediatrics and internal medicine and a zeal that dates to her Sidwell Friends days in Teens Against the Spread of AIDS, White is in an ideal position at American University to help guide patients into young adulthood—and student response shows that she does. Reitman marvels, “I’ve never seen a negative comment from a student.”

“There’s so much to be gained from the Sidwell Friends model of empathy and service and listening to others,” White, a Sidwell Friends lifer, says. 

That background “is really valuable in navigating some of the complexities at work here. Being a physician, you have to be competent in science and also develop as a human being. After all, we’re here to help you become a happier, healthier person.”