Dr. Jackie Machado didn’t become a pediatrician by accident. She became one for the most personal of reasons.

She wanted to help her sister.

Growing up, Jackie watched her sister struggle through childhood with autism and ADHD. There were medications. Band-aid treatments. Provider after provider managing symptoms without ever asking why. No one explored nutrition. No one looked for root causes. No one helped the family adapt or understand how to truly support her.

The system kept adding prescriptions, but never subtracting suffering.

Years later, Jackie’s sister died from complications related to the very medications meant to help her.

That loss never left her.

Grove Wellness Kids exists because Dr. Jackie wanted to help families before they reach crisis. Because she believes every child deserves what her sister never received: a provider who asks why, who looks beyond symptoms, and who helps families make sense of what their intuition is already telling them.

“I help families see their children differently,” she says. “And that changes everything.”

Meet the Founder of Grove Wellness Kids

Name: Dr. Jackie Machado
Practice: Grove Wellness Kids
Location: Coral Gables, Florida
Clinical Focus: Pediatric functional medicine, gut health, neurodevelopment and behavior, immune and environmental health, pediatric nutrition, growth, and parent coaching

Grove Wellness Kids is a boutique pediatric functional medicine practice built around labs-first investigation, root-cause care, and a high-touch patient experience. Jackie’s work blends conventional pediatric training with functional medicine principles to support children’s health at the foundational level, not just when symptoms become unmanageable.

But her leadership story extends far beyond credentials.

A Clinician Shaped by Complexity

Before founding Grove Wellness Kids, Dr. Jackie spent several years working in the pediatric intensive care unit. In the PICU, she became deeply skilled in pattern recognition. She learned to read subtle signals in a child’s body before they escalated into crisis. She grew comfortable holding complexity, uncertainty, and risk, often in the most critical moments of a family’s life.

That experience shaped her in ways most pediatricians are never trained for.

“I developed confidence with complexity and comfort with risk,” Jackie explains. “I can collaborate openly with families exploring paths their pediatricians won’t. I can connect dots others miss.”

It also gave her something equally important: intuition grounded in experience.

When Jackie later stepped into functional and integrative pediatrics, she recognized how powerful it could be to apply ICU-level pattern recognition to root-cause medicine, long before children reach the point of crisis.

A Practice Built to Ask Better Questions

At Grove Wellness Kids, care begins with investigation.

Jackie uses comprehensive lab testing to assess gut health, immune balance, mitochondrial function, inflammation, nutrient status, and environmental contributors. Rather than isolated protocols, families move through a seven-stage signature program designed to evolve with the child.

Education is woven into every visit. Parents are not rushed, reassured, or dismissed. They are guided.

“I want to give parents the clarity, partnership, and prevention-based guidance I wish my own family had received,” Jackie shares.

Her practice reflects that belief at every level, from longer consultations to intentional follow-up to a patient experience that feels thoughtful, supportive, and premium, something rarely offered in pediatrics.

A Transformation That Says Everything

One patient outcome continues to anchor Jackie in why this work matters.

A two-year-old with a genetic condition came to Grove Wellness Kids after seeing multiple specialists across two states. His speech was severely impaired. He could not focus. He could not sit still. Nothing prescribed had helped. But his parents knew he was in there.

What Jackie did differently was not experimental. It was investigative.

She reviewed existing labs with fresh eyes and identified mitochondrial deficits no one had connected to his symptoms. Additional stool testing revealed gut dysbiosis and low GABA production, both directly impacting neurological development.

Within weeks, the changes were profound.

His mother wrote:
“He has started saying three to four word unprompted phrases like ‘give me that,’ ‘open door papi,’ ‘my ball please.’ He is using them appropriately and we hope he will now start expanding his vocabulary.”

His therapy team documented his attention span improving from seconds to five focused minutes.

The moment that stayed with Jackie most?
He sat through a 2.5 hour Broadway show in New York City.

“This is what becomes possible when we connect the dots between gut health, mitochondrial function, and neurological development,” Jackie says. “And give the body what it needs to heal.”

Leading a Practice With Intention

Building Grove Wellness Kids also required Jackie to grow as a business owner, something she openly admits did not come naturally.

“I left the PICU knowing I wanted to practice differently, but I had zero idea how to run a business,” she shares. “I’m a clinician. A worker bee.”

Through her work with The Advanced Practice, Jackie gained more than systems. She gained perspective.

She learned how to build infrastructure she could depend on, workflows she trusted, and automations that handled repetitive tasks so she could focus on clinical work without sacrificing the patient journey. Just as importantly, she experienced a mindset shift.

“The Advanced Practice helped me realize that what I bring is actually rare,” Jackie explains. “ICU-level pattern recognition applied to root-cause pediatrics, my personal story, and my willingness to go where other pediatricians won’t. I could build a practice around that rarity and value myself accordingly.”

That clarity allowed Grove Wellness Kids to grow with intention, not urgency.

Changing the Pediatric Wellness Conversation

Jackie is currently exploring ways to expand Grove Wellness Kids to support adolescents and young adults, including new patient pathways made possible by The Advanced Practice’s hormone, metabolic, and skin health programs. The Align™ and Skin Shift™ programs are slated for 2026.

Her broader mission is simple and bold: premium, comprehensive care should not be reserved for adults.

“Children deserve premium health experiences too,” she says. “Comprehensive care should actually be comprehensive.”

Looking ahead, Jackie envisions Grove Wellness Kids becoming a replicable, franchise-ready model for luxury pediatric functional medicine, setting a new standard for what pediatric care can look like when prevention, education, and root-cause thinking come first.

A Glimpse Into Jackie’s World

• Best advice she lives by: Do it scared
• Wellness habit she swears by: Monthly massage
• Something surprising: She doesn’t like In-N-Out Burger
• What brings her the most joy outside of work: Her seven-year-old son

Grove Wellness Kids is more than a pediatric practice. It is the result of lived experience, clinical courage, and a refusal to accept surface-level care for children who deserve deeper answers.

And it stands as proof that when clinicians trust their instincts, honor their stories, and build with intention, they don’t just change outcomes.

They change systems.

Want to learn more about Dr. Jackie Machado and Grove Wellness Kids?
Instagram: @grove.wellness.kids
Website: https://grovewellnesskids.com/