Meet Our Founder

Elise Rivers, founder and acupuncturist, started CAMA Wellness Center 15 years ago. Learn how Elise’s and her staff’s passion for whole-hearted wellness, back on our 10th anniversary, has helped thousands of people become more healthy and vibrant. 

T. Collin Campbell's program at Cornell Univerity
Certified in Oncology Acupuncture
Mulching tree pits on Germantown Ave
Elise describes her work over 9 years as a board member of the Mt. Airy Business Improvement Disctrict (MBID)
Winning the City Gardens Contest for the 6700 block for improvements she implemented
Elise with her Won Institute students where she taught acupuncture for 15 years

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Our Staff by Department

We offer affordable, compassionate, effective, preventive, holistic care, including: acupuncture, bodywork, plant-based nutrition and self-care education.

Acupuncture is a 2500 year old healing art that is empirically effective--meaning over thousands of years, it has proven itself to be a method of healing that works.
Meet our Acupuncturists
Learn more about the Northwest Center for Food As Medicine that provides education and support to transform your health.
Meet our Plant-based Nutritionists
Bodywork is extremely effective at managing stress (which underlies most chronic diseases), repairing injuries, and calming the body.
Meet our Bodyworkers

Stories From Our Clients

We’ve been serving the Mount Airy region for over 15 years and have been privileged to serve thousands of clients from all backgrounds. Hear what they have to say…

Meet Our Nutritionists

Elise Rivers

Elise Rivers

Elise became a passionate advocate of plant-based eating in 2013, dedicating herself to learning about and communicating the benefits of a whole foods plant-based diet.

Once she realized her knowledge of food-as-medicine could transform her patients’ health, she has continuously immersed herself in teachings from doctors Neal Barnard, Michael Greger, T. Colin Campbell, Michael Klaper and Caldwell Esselstyn.

Through promoting lifestyle medicine at CAMA, she continues to be gratified and amazed by the progress her patients make in dramatically improving or reversing the course of their chronic diseases and conditions.

She has experience with altering the course of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity and hypertension with this affordable, powerful, accessible (and do-able!) solution.

Certified by both T. Colin Campbell’s Center for Nutrition Studies program in plant-based nutrition:

T. Collin Campbell's program at Cornell Univerity

as well as Dr. Klaper’s Moving Medicine Forward Initiative:

She helps her clients to be empowered and inspired to reclaim their vitality, laying the foundation for a long and healthy life. 

Kirsten Puskar

MS, RDN, LDN

Kirsten Puskar, MS, RDN, LDN

Kirsten is a registered dietitian nutritionist licensed in Pennsylvania and an experienced practitioner of medical nutrition therapy (MNT). She has been helping people improve their health her entire career, initially by designing parks and healthcare gardens as a landscape architect to promote more physical activity.

 

To make the most of your consults with Kirsten, ideally you have your most recent blood test results (within the past 4 months). She’d like to see a Lipids panel (cholesterol), Vitamin D levels, and if pre-diabetic or diabetic the HbA1c, and any blood sugar logs or meter if you’re testing. It is also very helpful for her to see what clients are eating for 2-3 days before the appointment: simply document what you eat on what you feel are your “healthy days.”

Her specialty is providing food choices that fit into your life, and improve your overall health. Meeting with Kirsten for a personal nutrition consultation will involve reviewing your current eating style and preferences, and helping you find alternatives that you enjoy, and that have the potential to dramatically improve your health. Your conscious food choices are the key to living a longer, happier and better life!

She was also always interested in how food choices help improve lives, and as her children entered college, she entered the healthcare profession. She chose to study health and nutrition and to become a registered dietitian and certified diabetes educator to support people in finding healthy alternatives to the Standard American Diet, a diet that generally leads to developing one of our 3 major killers: Heart Disease, Diabetes or Cancer.

Kirsten has degrees from Penn State and Drexel and currently works part-time at Chestnut Hill Endocrinology as their diabetes educator. 

Insurances Accepted:

Kirsten accepts insurance that may cover your nutrition consults with a $40 co-pay:

  • AmeriHealth Inc. Administrators
  • Cigna
  • Independence Administrators
  • Independence Blue Cross
  • Keystone HPE
  • Keystone 65
  • Medicare

If you have any of these as your insurer, please contact them to get the details of your coverage.