I'm Justin Yamashita, and I work inside the system most people are trying to understand.

I hold a Bachelor's in Biological Sciences and a Master's in Biochemistry. My thesis research focused on epigenetics and host immune response: specifically how bacterial byproducts change the way the immune system behaves at a molecular level.

After graduate school, I moved into clinical research at trial sites as a Clinical Research Coordinator. I saw how trials work from the patient side, up close. Then I moved into trial operations, where I now run global Phase I, II, and III trials as a Senior Project Manager at a large contract research organization (CRO).

Why this exists

But the credentials aren’t why Root to Rx exists.

Here's what I actually see. Trials struggle to enroll because people don't know they exist, don't know where to find them, or don't trust them. Not because the science is bad. Because nobody ever showed them how any of it works

The problem in health communication isn't complexity. It's how the information gets delivered. Root to Rx is part of Open Label Media, LLC, a family of brands built on the same promise as our name: no hidden ingredients. Everything we make, this newsletter included, is built in the open. Learn more at openlabelmedia.com.

Too much health content either talks down to people or buries them in jargon. Both approaches produce the same result: readers who can't evaluate what they're being told. That's how misinformation fills the gap.

Science isn't just a body of facts. It's a way of asking questions. Root to Rx is my attempt to hand that skill to anyone who wants it, using real research, on real topics, explained without shortcuts.

Three newsletters. One nurse's career. Read what fits.

Root to Rx sends three free newsletters, each written for a different reader. Read one or all three. Together they follow Nani, a nurse turned clinical research coordinator, from her first day at a research site to the letters she writes from Hawaii.

The shape of the week can change as the newsletter grows. When it does, the current schedule is always what you see here and in the newsletter itself.

Wednesday, Plain Talk. For everyone. Each issue opens in The Root Room, where the week's health claim is already working on somebody, and recurring characters like Martha, a health skeptic moving from outright denial toward informed skepticism, carry the arc. Then Plain Talk hands you the tools: PAUSE for staying in a hard conversation, and the Skeptic's Toolkit for working the claim itself. It ends with a verdict: EARNED, OVERSOLD, NOT YET, MISBRANDED, FEAR BAIT, MEMORY HOLE, or DEAD END. This fall's series, Small Doses, takes on twelve viral health claims, one a week.

Once a week, The Open Site File. For anyone who works in clinical research or wants to break in. It follows Nani's first years as a research coordinator, from consent forms and study visits to data queries, and what the job looks like from the inside. Turn it on in your preferences after you subscribe.

Sunday, The Roots. For the people who get asked. Nani, now retired in Hawaii, answers one letter a week from the nurses, coordinators and pharmacists who field the hard questions. It publishes on LinkedIn and Substack.

When a topic needs the full receipts, every source and the citation tiers to weigh them, The Informed returns as a special issue. All of it is free.

The tools

Most people in health media have seen one level of this pipeline. I've worked at three: bench science, trial sites, and contract research. That context shapes everything I write here.

Root to Rx gives you frameworks you can actually use outside of reading this newsletter.

The Field Guide holds five free, printable conversation cards. The OPEN Card is a four step framework for navigating hard health conversations: Own your intention. Picture their story. Explore before you explain. Name something real you share. The PAUSE Card is a five step protocol for slowing down before you respond to a claim, especially when you're certain you're right. STILL, STARVE and REACH cover the rest: staying calm instead of fixing, not feeding a bad claim, and helping good science travel.

The Skeptic's Toolkit is a 10 question framework for evaluating any health claim. Not to dismiss ideas reflexively, but to examine them carefully.

These tools are free to use and share.

All games below are free and play in your browser.

What’s Your Skeptic Type? shows how you naturally read a health claim.

Got Skepticism? runs any claim through the Skeptic’s Toolkit.

Does It Have a Receipt? puts seven health products through the clinical research pipeline.

Wellness or Evidence? sorts ten claims into marketing dressed as science versus real studies.

Stay in the Room turns the OPEN and PAUSE cards into practice, and Don’t Rage Quit is the same for a younger crowd.

Just One More Channel puts you inside the algorithm.

Trial by Trial is the capstone: name the tactic, beat the tactic.

All at openlabelmedia.com.

What's Your Skeptic Type?

A quick quiz that shows how you naturally read a health claim, then points you to your best next step. Free, no signup.

What this is built on

"Open label" is a clinical research term. It means no blinding, no hidden group, no concealed agenda. Every participant knows what they're getting and why.

That's how Root to Rx operates. No undisclosed conflicts. No buried incentives. The same evidence standards we ask readers to apply to others, we apply to ourselves here.

The thinkers and works behind this approach are collected in The Roots and, at Open Label Media, in Behind the Label.

Take as directed by the evidence.

Subscribe at the top or bottom of this page. Find us on Instagram and in the Root to Rx Facebook community, where the questions continue between issues.

If you refer a friend who subscribes, you earn a collector card from Series 1. Card 001 is Sam. There are 10 in the set.

Find us on Instagram and in the Root to Rx Facebook community, where the questions keep going between issues.

The views expressed on Root to Rx are my own and do not represent the views or positions of my employer or any affiliated organization.