Meet the Expert: How Dr. Jasmin Jamora Is Bringing Expert Skin Care to the Masses

Dr. Jasmin Jamora is swiftly scrolling through her phone, searching for a particular photo she wants to show me. She’s excited. “Don’t vomit, okay?” she says, by way of a warning.

She then proceeds to show photos of a pigmented skin condition called Schamberg’s disease (“His blood vessels are bursting.”), and a scalp condition called dissecting cellulitis (“He’s got pustules and carbuncles on his scalp.”). “Never ask to see a dermatologist’s phone,” she jokes, putting hers away, and then continuing our conversation about the dermatology fields that she is trained in—immunodermatology, dermatopathology, integrative dermatology, and dermoscopy.

When Dr. Jamora talks about dermatology, you can practically feel the passion for her craft radiating from her. It’s surprising, then, to learn that medicine was not a path she initially wanted to take.

“I didn’t want to be a doctor,” she shares. “I wanted to do art therapy for children after my psychology degree,” which she earned from the University of the Philippines. But as the daughter of two brilliant doctors—her father, her idol, is in pulmonary critical care, and her mother, whose footsteps she followed in, is also a dermatologist, and one of the founders of the Skin and Cancer Foundation—she muses that, against all odds, the genes were passed on.

Dr. Jamora thought she’d go into pulmonary critical care like her dad, but after doing her internship in internal medicine at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, where she worked with dying patients in the critical care unit, her father, seeing the emotional toll it was taking on his formerly cheerful daughter, told her, “You’ve lost your sweetness. Please, just go do dermatology with your mother.”

“I thought my mom was a pimple popper,” Dr. Jamora says matter-of-factly. “I was not impressed. But then I entered [dermatology] residency, and I was like, ‘My God, this field is so difficult.’ As in, dudugo yung mata mo.”

In a twist of fate, the once-reluctant Dr. Jamora is now the current president of PDS, the same position that her mother, Dr. Sylvia Jacinto, also held in the 1970s.

The Philippine Dermatological Society, established in 1952, is now composed of 1,430 board-certified dermatologists. “That means,” she says, “that every single member has had four years of medical school, one year of internship, three years of residency, and passed a very difficult board exam.”

This level of experience and training that a board-certified dermatologist can lay claim to is often overlooked here in the Philippines, where the public mostly equates dermatology with beauty and aesthetics.

“Dermatology is a glamorous specialty, “ Dr. Jamora says with a smile and a shrug. “I get the stereotype that it’s all about beauty. A lot of it is. We have wonderful aesthetic dermatologists in PDS—some of the best and the brightest, and so good at what they do.”

But at the same time, Dr. Jamora stresses, beauty and aesthetics are not the only things that dermatology is about. “A lot of us also serve those who are in the ICU with toxic epidermal necrolysis, and their skin has all spilled off. People just don’t see the unglamorous side, but they need to understand that there’s also a depth to the care.”

One of the pillars of the PDS, Dr. Jamora explains, is service “in all corners of the country.” She shares about the work that PDS does with persons deprived of liberty in the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology. She talks about Project Touch, where PDS travels all the way to the geographically isolated area of Linapacan in north Palawan, populated by indigenous people, where they offer the residents free skin and surgical services, and train barangay health workers and local doctors.

Accessibility is one thing Dr. Jamora would like the PDS to be known for under her leadership, especially in this day and age of mis- and dis-information and the widespread practice of dermatology and aesthetics by what she calls “non-doctors,” or aesthetics practitioners who do not possess a medical license.

“I would like the public to come to the [doctors of] PDS first as approachable sources of expertise for skin, hair, and nail care,” she says, going on to say that there are many avenues for free care from a board-certified PDS dermatologist, including 17 hospitals where the PDS trains residents, and teleconsultation channels. “I don’t like the stereotype that care is only for the rich. I really don’t like that,” she says.

From the tone her voice takes when she speaks, you can tell that service is of utmost importance to Dr. Jamora. “We care about people who don’t have access to care. For me, there should be no injustice or inequity in dermatology care.”

Service, it seems, is what keeps her going, in a profession that is demanding on all fronts. “I really want to serve,” she says. “When I was a young kid, through my parents, I saw that doctors help people. It’s cliché, but it’s true.” 

Dr. Jamora’s path wasn’t shaped by vanity—it was shaped by values. In her hands, dermatology doesn’t just treat skin. It transforms lives.

Photography by Kieran Punay. Makeup: Zee Ghielmetti. Hair: Cats del Rosario.