Ashley Drapeau

Ashley Drapeau is one of those rare clinicians who brings together the precision of Western medicine, the depth of Chinese medicine, and the hard-won wisdom of personal experience. As a Physician Assistant, board-certified Acupuncturist, and Long COVID patient herself, Ashley understands from the inside what it means to navigate a complex, invisible illness in a medical system that doesn't always have answers.

With over 15 years of experience and credentials spanning both Western and Eastern medicine, Ashley has built a practice where no patient has to choose between evidence-based medicine and the whole-person care they deserve. She is widely recognized as one of the leading clinicians in the country for Long COVID, EDS, and the constellation of conditions that so often travel together.

Ashley's path into integrative medicine is rooted in service — first to her country, then to her patients. She spent six years as a Physician Assistant in the United States Air Force, an experience that gave her both clinical rigor and a deep respect for resilience. When her military service ended, she began asking bigger questions about healing: Why do some patients get better when others, with the same diagnosis, don't? What does medicine miss when it only looks at one system at a time?

Those questions led her to Chinese medicine. Ashley went back to school to earn a Master of Acupuncture (MAc), and what she found there transformed the way she practiced. Acupuncture wasn't just a tool to add to her kit — it was a lens. A way of seeing the body's patterns, its imbalances, and its capacity for self-regulation. Combined with her functional medicine training, it gave her a language for conditions that Western medicine often can't fully explain.

Then she got Long COVID herself. That experience — living inside the exhaustion, the cognitive fog, the unpredictability — reshaped her clinical practice in ways no textbook could. She knew, from the inside, what patients needed: to be believed, to be investigated thoroughly, and to be treated as a whole person navigating something genuinely hard.

It was that experience, and that commitment, that brought Ashley to GWCIM — a place where her full range of skills, perspectives, and passions found a home. Today, she leads one of the most respected Long COVID programs in the country and continues to push the boundaries of what integrative medicine can offer patients with complex, chronic conditions.

As Medical Director of GWCIM, Ashley helps shape the clinical vision of the center, ensuring that every patient who walks through GWCIM's doors receives care that is thorough, integrative, and deeply human. As Director of the Long COVID Program, she leads an interdisciplinary team that coordinates everything from functional medicine testing and acupuncture to physical therapy, speech therapy, dietary counseling, and psychotherapy — all under one roof.

What makes Ashley's work at GWCIM truly distinctive is her ability to bridge worlds. She is equally at home ordering advanced functional medicine labs as she is placing acupuncture needles — and she uses both to understand why a patient's body is struggling and how to help it heal. For patients with EDS, MCAS, POTS, and Long COVID — conditions that are often dismissed, misunderstood, or undertreated — this integrated approach can be life-changing.

Ashley also collaborates closely with Dr. Kogan and the full GWCIM team, modeling the kind of collaborative, interdisciplinary care that is at the heart of what integrative medicine does best.

Ashley brings the same curiosity and care to her life outside the clinic that she brings to her patients. As someone navigating Long COVID herself, she has a deeply personal relationship with rest, restoration, and the practices that help the body and nervous system find balance. She enjoys riding her horse, Milo, and spending time with her wife and son.