A little more than four years out of school, Dr. Brittany Kasprack had built her own practice Mid South Chiropractic in north Mississippi, but had never stepped foot in Clarksdale until January.
Mid South Chiropractic opened one office in Olive Branch in 2015, another in Hernando a year and a half later and then one in Horn Lake a half a year after that.
“We actually had several patients coming from the Clarksdale area out to our clinics in north Mississippi and telling us, ‘Hey, we need somebody in Clarksdale,’” Kasprack said. “We were like, ‘What’s going on?’ One of our patients walked in and handed me a phone number of a previous chiropractor who was here in Clarksdale who is no longer here. You need to talk. It kind of opened the door to us having conversation about creating a location down here and the rest is kind of history.”
Kasprack contacted previous Clarksdale chiropractors, Dr. Alia McCoy and her mother Dr. Patty Johnson, and decided there was a need to open an office in Clarksdale.
One month later, in February, Mid South Chiropractic, opened a temporary office in downtown Clarksdale. It moved to its permanent location in March two doors down in downtown Clarksdale at 208 Sunflower Ave.
Mid South Chiropractic rented the building from Charles Evans, who resides in California, owns several buildings in Clarksdale and is a frequent visitor.
Coming to Clarksdale
“We wanted to bring some of the Clarksdale charm,” said Kasprack of moving downtown. “I love the downtown area. It’s cute. It’s fun. It has a lot of culture to it and we wanted to bring some of that. Of course, we didn’t really think as much about the parking issues as I wish we would have. But, nonetheless, having that charm and having some of the historic area kind of rehabbed and rebuilt is a big thing for us.”
Kasprack said Coahoma County Tourism executive director Bubba O’Keefe showed her around town prior to opening an office in Clarksdale. She made a word puzzle for her staff to guess where she was opening another clinic. She said, as soon as everyone saw the letters “c” and “l,” they all started screaming, “Clarksdale.”
One of the new walls is a “wellness wall” patients sign when they get well.
Kasprack and Dr. Cameron Scott are the two local doctors. Mid South Chiropractic is open in Clarksdale Tuesdays and Fridays and part of the day Thursday.
There were no walls and nothing was in the building when Mid South Chiropractic moved in.
Kasprack said it was Sarah’s Kitchen several years ago and the words “blues for the body” were on the bricks inside the building. She decided to keep the words “for the body” on those same bricks.
The office in Clarksdale has a passive therapy area where patients are on the STEM roller bed and different ultrasounds. There is an adjusting table, exam rooms and a completely digital X-Ray room that uploads immediately.
“That’s nice,” Kasprack said. “When it comes to X-ray, it doesn’t take very long for us to find out.
“We’re real big on exam, exam, exam. You know what you’re getting into before we actually start working on patients, know everything.”
While Kasprack has been very happy with the decision to open a clinic in Clarksdale, it has not been without challenges. The clinic moved to its new location just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the nation and there has not been a ribbon cutting where she would have an opportunity to get to know even more of the community.
Kasprack said Clarksdale is a place with great opportunity for people to come, start a business and raise a family as there as the community has great assets and an affordable living rate.
“I’m embarrassed. I have heard of it and I am so embarrassed to say that I didn’t know about this community because I was really missing out on something,” Kasprack said. “When I learned about it and came down here, I drove through the little downtown area. I was like, ‘This is awesome. How did I miss this?’”
Kasprack said people underestimated her ability to open clinic in Clarksdale in an area of poverty, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Realistically, she said Mid South Chiropractic could not have opened an office in Clarksdale without its other clinics, especially from get-go, but big issue many have to get past to succeed locally is the current mindset. She said people should want to find ways to invest in their community.
She said a big key to success is making sure patients feel safe during the current time of uncertainty.
“When we’re open, we’re all masked,” Kasprack said. “We’re making sure we’re cleaning like crazy. I think I’m going to turn into cleaning solution pretty soon. We’re making sure we send our patents messages to make sure, ‘Hey, please don’t come in if you’ve got a cough, a cold, been exposed or anything like that,’ and we’re just making sure we’re staying on top of everything.”
Building a practice
Kasprack, a Collierville, Tenn., native is a 2008 Collierville High School graduate. She earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Tennessee at Martin in exercise science in 2011, a bachelor of science in human anatomy from Logan University in St. Louis in 2013, and earned master’s degree in sports rehab and a doctorate in chiropractic therapy, both from Logan University in 2015.
She founded Mid South Chiropractic right out of school. The first two locations were in her hometown Collierville, Tenn. and Olive Branch. She expected Collierville, Tenn., to remain her home, but she fell in love with the community of Olive Branch and felt she was able to give more there. She moved to Olive Branch, where she currently resides, and sold her practice in Collierville, Tenn., to her best friend, Dena Granger.
Things have worked out for both Kasprack and Granger. Kasprack has since opened three more clinics in Mississippi, while Granger opened two more clinics after purchased the one in Collierville.
The start was not easy.
Kasprack went to multiple banks after she finished school looking for a loan to open her own practice. She said it took eight banks for someone to even remember her name. She acknowledged being a female was a disadvantage, but said one man at one small bank in Collierville, Tenn. – Triumph Bank – said he liked chiropractors, took a chance and financed her first couple of clinics.
“Get used to being told’ no’ a whole lot,” said Kasprack, who has $230,000 of student loans to pay at the time and did not come from a family with a lot of money.
Kasprack said it was a big challenge going from school where she was told her deadlines to having to hold herself accountable.
“It’s been a road,” Kasprack said. “It’s been a journey. A lot of fear. I remember the first day in 2015 when I realized I was actually going to be able to pay my rent for the first time. The journey has really changed a lot.”
Kid to chiropractor
When Kasprack was young, she would go to the chiropractor with her mother, Lisa Kasprack, and had a very different impression of the profession than she does today.
“I would always go with her, but I would always say, ‘Ooh, no. That’s for boys. I’m not doing that,’” Kasprack said. “As I was growing and watching her go, one day I finally had a horse riding accident, she said, ‘You’re going, regardless.’ Kind of the rest was history.
“The horse actually reared up, flipped over and landed on me so my entire spine was really kind of jarred so to say, but it was primarily neck issues, which led to headaches. A chiropractor (Dr. Brian Spiecha in Germantown) kind of got me realigned. I was 11 years old at this point. I don’t remember every detail of it, but it got me back where I needed to be. It got me back to riding. I really didn’t have a whole lot of missed time.”
Kasprack still horseback rides hunter jumpers to this day, but she was not convinced to be a chiropractor until several years later.
“Going into college, I kind of was in the same mindset, ‘You know, hey, that stuff is for boys. I’m not going to be a chiropractor. No way. No, no, no,’” she said. “I knew I wanted to do something in the health field. I really had my eyes opened to how great chiropractic is and how wide the reach is, how much you could possibly do with it. I ended up deciding to go to Logan to study chiropractic.”
Since opening her own practice, Kasprack has found there to be stereotypes against female chiropractors, but it has not been a hindrance when it comes to doing her job.
“I think that it’s actually worked to my advantage and I could be wrong,” she said. “But people don’t expect much and I hate that. It’s one of those things where I was pretty far into my fear and somebody said, ‘Oh, how’s the doctor over there? How is he?’ It didn’t even register that I was female because they had only read my name and asked that somebody else who’s on our staff. And I’m thinking, ‘Why would you have to assume I was a male? Why did you make an assumption?’ I don’t think it’s really hindered me in my work life as much. I think, if anything, people don’t expect for me to be able to do quite what I’ve done. I’ve created four clinics in four years. That’s been good, but then personal life, it’s a struggle. It’s hard to balance family and having relationships and stuff like that when you’re very female business driven.”
