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 contract research operations, where I now run global Phase I, II, and III trials as a Senior Project Manager at PPD, part of Thermo Fisher Scientific.
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.
Why this exists
But the credentials aren’t why Root to Rx exists.
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.
Four tracks. One topic. Read what fits.
Every issue covers the same subject four ways. You read what fits.
Plain Talk arrives in your inbox. It's written for anyone: clear, direct, no background required.
The Informed is the web companion for readers who want the full picture. The data, the mechanisms, the regulatory context. It's written with clinicians and clinical research professionals in mind, but it's open to anyone who wants to go deeper.
The Root Room is the second web companion: a story track. Recurring characters work through each issue's evidence together. That includes Debby, a health skeptic who moves from outright denial toward informed skepticism over the arc of the newsletter. Same science. Told differently.
The Open Site File takes you inside the work itself. Follow a clinical trial coordinator through the day to day of running a study at the site, and see how the Clinical Trial Site Resources get used, and how you can use them yourself.
All four tracks are free.
The tools
Root to Rx gives you frameworks you can actually use outside of reading this newsletter.
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.
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.
We have two free tools. Got Skepticism? and Stay in the Room take these frameworks off the page. Got Skepticism? runs any claim through the Skeptic's Toolkit so you can see whether your confidence is earned. Stay in the Room turns the OPEN and PAUSE cards into practice for real conversations. Both are free, play in your browser, and live 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 PPD, Thermo Fisher Scientific, or any affiliated organization.