Dr. TJ Grasch| Family Physician/Research Medical Director
2 Years with Confluence Health
For Dr. Grasch – or you might just know him as TJ – everything
and everyone is interconnected. Communities are an opportunity to come
together and learn, an opportunity to give back and contribute by being
a part of the greater whole. Ultimately for TJ, we are all threaded together
into a patchwork of various groups, backgrounds, traits, and traditions,
and this diversity binds us together into something we could never achieve
on our own.
Raised in the Midwest, TJ was surrounded by the medical profession early
on with a father who worked as a physician assistant and a sister who
went on to be a pediatrician. With supportive and encouraging parents,
he initially set out to strike a different path, studying the arts and
focusing on music. Though he loved singing and the art world, he kept
coming back to medicine.
Yet one important component of his love of music and the arts kept bubbling
to the surface: as any singer or musician knows, the most beautiful pieces
of art are only possible when individual contributors play a part of a
greater whole with others, when all the components come together. As an
orchestra is more than a solitary violin and a vocalist is elevated through
the music that guides his song, TJ knew that he wanted to play a role
in giving back to his community in whatever direction the tune took him.
This desire to give back – to support and care for all members of
his community by uplifting, advancing others, and helping others to have
a voice – drives him each day. At work, TJ can fill in gaps in care
in his community through his service in family medicine and his role in
medical research as he strives to push for medical trials that not only
benefit the industry, but the patients and people he serves. He knows
that we accomplish nothing on our own, and he aims to play the best part
he can in stitching the community together.
Within his own personal corner of the community he cares so passionately
about, TJ enjoys hiking with his husband, playing card and board games,
and meeting people. He’s even started to dip his toe back into the
world of the arts, connecting with the local theater community to bring
together the various parts of his life and again share in the interconnectedness
that binds us all.