As the tick crisis mounts on Martha’s Vineyard, an Island health care provider is piloting a new treatment path for people with tick-borne illnesses and allergies.
The Tick Center, set to launch next month through Martha’s Vineyard Medical, will bring a variety of health care and wellness providers under one roof to try to holistically conquer Lyme disease, alpha-gal syndrome and other conditions transmitted by ticks.
The past several years have seen the Vineyard become one of the nation’s hotspots for tick-borne illnesses and allergies. Positive alpha-gal tests on the Island jumped from just two in 2020 to more than 750 in 2025, and health care providers are trying to keep up.
Jeff Levy, CEO of Martha’s Vineyard Medical, told the Gazette on Tuesday that he’s hoping to revolutionize the way that Islanders can get treatment for tick-borne illnesses and allergies by pairing frequent lab testing with services like medication management, acupuncture and yoga.
“It was really born out of observing the challenges that people have who are not helped by what traditional clinical medicine is able to do for Lyme disease and the other co-infections,” he said of the effort. “You just have a bunch of people on the Island who are suffering.”
Mr. Levy is also an advisor to Tick Free MV, the Island nonprofit aiming to reduce tick-borne illness and disease by reducing the overall number of ticks on the Vineyard. Tick Free MV is not affiliated with Martha’s Vineyard Medical or the Tick Center.
Dr. Gerry Yukevich, a doctor at Martha’s Vineyard Medical, will serve as medical director at the Tick Center. It will also claim Katherine Friedman as its care provider and Aubrey Stimola Ryan as a care provider, according to a statement from Mr. Levy.
Martha’s Vineyard Medical has long been diagnosing and addressing tick-borne illness, Mr. Levy said. Former CEO Michael Loberg started the Martha’s Vineyard Tick-Borne Disease Initiative at Martha’s Vineyard Medical back when it was Vineyard Medical Care.
“The Tick Center starts where what our traditional tick clinic has been doing for 40 years ends,” he said.
Mr. Levy said that the new initiative will offer a mixture of evidence-based and evidence-supported approaches. Evidence-based approaches, he explained, are backed by peer-reviewed studies, which he said are “critically important.” But he also noted that there are other parts of treatment that traditional medicine is ignoring.
“[There are] things like acupuncture, nutritional supplements and yoga and mindfulness that are broadly accepted, but are not the subject of massive trials,” he said.
To provide these services, the Tick Center has tapped Vineyard Complementary Medicine, Vineyard Nutrition and Wholesome MV. The center is also working with PillClarity, a certification agency specializing in helping patients find allergen-free medication options, and a testing center called Labcorp to check patients’ bloodwork at regular intervals to see if and how they’re benefitting from the care they’re receiving.
“We’re getting amazingly aggressive pricing,” he said of the partnership with Labcorp.
Patrick Roden-Reynolds, tick biologist for the Islands' boards of health, is heartened to see new efforts to serve Islanders suffering from tick-borne illnesses and diseases.
“Hopefully it'll bring more access, or easier access, to [care for] these tick bite issues that a lot of people on this Island are dealing with,” he said of the Tick Center.
The Tick Center has also created a new diagnostic index to assess how patients are being impacted by their conditions and whether or not they’re improving.
Dr. Yukevich, who has been working in different capacities at Martha’s Vineyard Medical for over 20 years, is particularly concerned about the rise of alpha-gal on the Island and throughout the country. He said that mammalian products that can trigger anaphylaxis in alpha-gal patients lurk everywhere, from restaurant kitchens to medications administered on the operating table.
He is hopeful about Mr. Levy’s willingness to embrace approaches to the syndrome outside of what traditional medicine offers. Acupuncture, for example, could be effective for reducing alpha-gal patients’ immune reaction to mammalian products by reducing their levels of immunoglobulin E, the blood’s indicator of an allergic reaction.
“Part of it is also going to be learning. Our education is in process,” he said. “There’s a lot at stake.”
Mr. Levy said there is value for patients in having all providers under one roof and collaborating on a patient’s care. He hopes the Tick Center will set a “national standard” for how tick-borne illnesses and allergies are managed.
He isn’t aware of any other clinic in the country taking a similar approach.
“We’re bringing together an array of protocols that exist separately, but not in this coordinated way, at least to our knowledge,” he said.
Mr. Levy said that an initial appointment at the Tick Center is $350 and said that subsequent costs are dependent on the kind of care patients require. The practice does not take insurance directly, but patients can seek reimbursement with their insurance company, according to the Tick Center’s website.
Mr. Levy expects that the clinic will add an allergist, an infectious disease doctor and a functional medicine doctor in the near future. He also wants the Tick Center to direct new focus to research. He noted that Mr. Loberg was passionate about research being a core part of what is now Martha’s Vineyard Medical.
“We really look at that heritage as critically important,” he said. “We expect to work with researchers jointly to help advance knowledge and hopefully create a vaccine or a cure, ultimately, for alpha-gal.”
Dr. Yukevich hopes to take blood samples from different subpopulations, expose the samples to alpha-gal, and see how different samples react.
“Some people aren’t affected by this phenomenon in their systems,” he said. “It would be interesting to see why that could be the case.”
For both Dr. Yukevich and Mr. Levy, tackling a rapidly spreading public health crisis requires remaining nimble and learning as they go.
“Our goals will probably be changing as time goes on, depending on how this epidemic occurs and how it develops,” Dr. Yukevich said. “We won’t be calling the shots, the ticks will.”
Those seeking the center’s services can request an appointment on mvmed.org/tickcenter.
This article appears in April 24, 2026.
This is great,but they really aren’t doing anything to kill off the ticks. All that we hear about is how many deer we have,that drones are telling us where the deer are and instaed of having controlled burns in the state forest,year round killing of deer,spraying with permethrin to kill ticks and reintroducing guinea hens to the island,all the knowledge and new treatments will do absolutely nothing to stop the lyme disease epidemic which is getting worse. There are people who have it and don’t even know it yet. I had it and didn’t know it and saw a tick on me and got a blood test and was told that tick didn’t give me lyme disease,but the blood test showed I had it in the past and never knew it and that it could affect me in the future,good news!
How does one get Ticks to do Yoga and get acupuncture?
Why have ticks, who have been around 100M years, just now in the last 50 years spreading Lyme disease?
The bacteria that causes Lyme disease has been around for thousands years.
Because Lyme was identified specifically until 1975 and wasn’t an officially named disease until 1982. There is evidence of it going back thousands of years.
After years of hopping for this Im so glad to see it finally happening! Bravo
SOOOOooooo—-why not attempt to eradicate as many deer as possible? Like all of them?
Get rid of all the deer and the herds of turkeys so that we can enjoy our yards
in shorts and sandals.
You do know that deer swim over from the mainland. Eradicating all of them will never happen.
Bravo to both Bills.
We have a geographic advantage most communities would envy — our defined island boundary that makes near-complete deer population management achievable. This isn’t fantasy, it’s a logistics problem with a pretty straight forward solution.
How about, a professionally managed culling program, staffed by trained marksmen and operating under island-wide municipal authorization. The population could be reduced or eliminated in a relatively short order. Marry this with a small processing facility converting harvested deer into venison products (jerky comes to mind) to assist in off-setting the costs. Also guessing this would get ample donations.
What’s hard to reconcile is this: Lyme disease on the Vineyard runs at 11 times the state rate — and Rocky Mountain spotted fever at 185 times higher and our response is building infrastructure to treat the illness rather than eliminate its primary vector. Treatment centers are expensive, ongoing, and leave the underlying problem intact. Responsible deer management doesn’t.
At some point, eliminating the source has to be more compelling than managing the consequences and suffering.
Excellent analysis, Harry S. Thank you!
$350 for a visit! I have alpha gal and have been treated by Dr. Paul Hesterberg at Mass General Hospital in Boston. He conducts Zoom appointments, so you don’t have to travel to MGH and you can get your blood tested at the Vineyard hospital. Plus, your health insurance will cover the appointments.
And I agree, we need to eliminate the deer and turkey populations on the island with an organized, massive hunt
The deer meat could be processed by a team of butchers and sent to food pantries around the state.
Multiple approaches are needed to deal with tick/illness problems. Reducing the deer population is important. Developing better treatment centers is important. Also, homeowners can help by distributing permethrin-treated tick tubes around their property. Mice use the treated cotton in their nests and ticks that subsequently bite the mice will die. This stops transmission from mice, which are a reservoir for Lyme and other things like babesiosis, to the ticks. You can buy the tubes or there are sites online that describe how to make your own.
I applaud the calls for culling the deer. Famously, killing the deer on Monhegan Island got rid of the ticks. The account is here: https://www.islandinstitute.org/ii-solution/monhegans-special-hunt/
The conclusion is this: “Since then, there have been only two cases of Lyme disease on Monhegan.”
While I applaud the effort I wonder if the upfront fee and non acceptance of insurance will preclude too many people in at risk populations from accessing this program. I hope there’s some consideration given for those folks.