Rick Pescatore, D.O.

Physician, editor, and founder working on the problems medicine sets aside.

I am a board-certified emergency physician, the Editor-in-Chief of Emergency Medicine News, and the founder of BellyMD, a gut-brain health company in Philadelphia.

United States Naval Academy · U.S. Navy submarine force · Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine · Cooper University Hospital · American Board of Emergency Medicine

Rick Pescatore, D.O.

Current work

BellyMD

After years of seeing patients with disabling gut symptoms and normal workups, I started a company to take those conditions seriously. BellyMD builds tools and therapeutics for disorders of gut-brain interaction.

belly-md.com

Emergency Medicine News

I edit the leading independent news publication in emergency medicine, published by Wolters Kluwer. Before that I wrote its monthly evidence column, What to D.O.

Read EMN

Clinical practice

I continue to work clinically in community emergency departments in Delaware and New Jersey, and I lead NIDA-funded programs supporting emergency physicians in the management of substance use disorders.

Full background
Disorders of gut-brain interaction affect roughly forty percent of adults. Most of those patients have normal imaging, normal labs, and a long record of being told that nothing is wrong.
Why I work on the gut-brain axis

Selected writing

  • The Philadelphia Inquirer An E.R. doctor’s call to action: Treat gun violence as an epidemic we can conquer

    Op-ed, October 2017

  • Emergency Medicine News What to D.O.

    Monthly evidence column, later Editor-in-Chief

  • High Times Cannabis Isn’t the Problem

    On cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome and harm reduction, August 2025

  • The Merck Manual Procedural chapters, Professional Edition

    Contributing author

  • Public Health Implementation of Test-to-Stay

    Peer-reviewed, 2022, with colleagues from the Delaware Division of Public Health

  • The DO Misinformation: A public health crisis DOs can address

    October 2019

All writing

In the press

I have appeared on Larry King Now, MSNBC, and CNN, and my public health work in Delaware was covered by U.S. News & World Report and Business Insider. I co-host the EMN Live podcast. Twenty-six peer-reviewed publications are indexed on PubMed.

Media and press materials

Contact

For press, speaking, and editorial inquiries:

I read everything, and I reply to most of it.