From Food Scales to Forecasts: My Unconventional Healthcare Journey
10/21/2025
By Olayide Adejumobi, Project Manager, PCCI
A Dietitian with a Plot Twist
Today I work at Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI), a cutting-edge non-profit that is dedicated to using AI and data to help the most vulnerable in our community. The highest of high tech is practiced here, but the funny thing is, before I got here my technology knowledge (albeit limited) was solely focused on nutrition and helping people eat healthier.
I never saw myself as a “tech person.” I actively dodged computer science in school, dreaming instead of guiding patients through carrots, cake, and portion control. My experience growing up in Oyo State, in the southwest part of Nigeria, was a beautiful blend of tradition, community, and resilience. The streets were always alive with the sounds of neighbors greeting each other, children playing, and the aroma of home-cooked meals wafting through the air. Life wasn’t always easy, but there was a deep sense of togetherness. Everyone looked out for one another.
Whether it was sharing food, helping with chores, or celebrating milestones, the community spirit was strong and unwavering. That environment taught me the value of connection and support, which has stayed with me ever since.
Back then, my essentials were a food scale, portion plates, and nutrition guides—never spreadsheets or code. Yet a few years later, I have found myself leading projects on predictive models and data migrations, a transformation even the teenage me wouldn’t have believed.
The Clinical Dietitian Days: Love, Learning, and Less Time with Patients
As a hospital dietitian, I fancied myself a food superhero, swooping in to save patients from unhealthy habits. Reality, however, served me a generous slice of humble pie. I had only minutes per patient—speed-dating with cholesterol levels—hardly enough time to unearth root causes. Worse, I’d craft a diabetic meal plan only to learn the patient lived in a food desert. It was like using a rusty spade to weed a neglected garden. I loved clinical work, but I craved solutions that reached beyond the exam room.
Pivot to Public Health: Zooming Out to See the Bigger Picture
Determined to make a broader impact, I earned a master’s in healthcare administration and analytics and landed an internship as a public health research analyst at PCCI. Suddenly, I traded one-on-one consults for community-wide data. Mapping heart disease by ZIP Code felt like detective work—and I was hooked. Predictive modeling became my crystal ball, forecasting neighborhoods in need of extra support. I have found that helping whole populations can be even more rewarding than individual wins.
Interning at PCCI: From Nutrition Notes to Neighborhood Data
My PCCI internship cemented my passion for healthcare innovation. I wasn’t a coder—I was a dietitian with keen observation and people skills. But PCCI welcomed my clinical lens as I dug into non-medical drivers of health: housing, transit, and food access. One study revealed Dallas neighborhoods with sky-high ER visits for conditions preventable by better food access. That “aha” moment drove home that data isn’t just numbers—it’s people’s lives framed in pixels.
I learned to craft dashboards that translate messy datasets into clear stories, contribute to grant proposals, and work seamlessly across disciplines. PCCI taught me that solving health problems often starts outside the clinic—by understanding the communities we serve.
Project Manager Life: Driving Health Beyond the Clinic
Today, I lead projects tackling nonmedical drivers of health that shape patient outcomes before they enter a clinic. I’ve swapped food scales for Gantt charts and stakeholder meetings (tea in hand, since I’m happily coffee free). One minute, I’m debating AI ethics with a data scientist; the next, I’m teaming up with community health workers to turn our models into on the ground programs.
The sense of community I grew up with is what first drew me to nutrition and now fuels my work as a project manager. In both fields, the goal is the same: to help people thrive. Back then, I saw how access to good food and shared knowledge could uplift a whole neighborhood. Today, I bring that same mindset into my projects, focusing on collaboration, empathy, and impact. Every task I manage is rooted in the belief that when we support each other, we all move forward.
A highlight in my journey has been building the Health Equity Disparities Index for the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council Foundation. We pinpointed North Texas areas with the biggest gaps in pediatric asthma, maternal health, and diabetes outcomes. Our findings—now in the hands of hospital leaders and health systems—will shape targeted interventions, from local meal deliveries to mobile clinics. It’s not direct patient care, but it helps steer real, population level change.
Carving Your Own Path
My career has been a squiggly line from dietetics to data and public health—and I have loved every twist and turn. If you’re passionate about health care but scrubs don’t excite you, remember that there’s room for your talents beyond the bedside. You can drive impact as an analyst, researcher, project manager, or in countless roles that blend clinical insight with innovation.
Whether you transform one life or thousands, you’re advancing health. In public health, upstream fixes mean healthier lives downstream. And to think, the girl who once feared code now wrangles data for good—still coffee free, of course. Stay curious, trust your unconventional path, and keep a sense of humor. The road less traveled often leads to the greatest impact.
About Olayide “Olay” Adejumobi
Olay is a seasoned healthcare professional with 11 years of clinical experience and five years of medical nutrition therapy and disease management experience. As a clinical project manager, she collaborates with cross-functional key stakeholders primarily focused on patient outcomes. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Nutritional Science and Public Health from institutions in Nigeria and Texas Tech University and earned her master’s degree in healthcare administration from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.