Sol Direct Primary Care Is the First DPC Practice in Southwest Atlanta. Dr. Michelle Cooke Built It for Black Women, and the Field Just Gave Her Its Physician of the Year Award.

Practice Spotlight by DPC Insider — Practice Desk
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Sources: Sol Direct Primary Care: A welcoming medical home for patients | The Atlanta Voice · Sol DPC in Atlanta, Georgia | DPC News · Sol Direct Primary Care — About Us · DPC Summit Conference 2026 · Racial disparities in health care: Maternal, infant mortality remains high in Georgia | Jagwire, Augusta University · Direct Primary Care 2024 Data Brief | American Academy of Family Physicians · State of DPC 2026: Key Takeaways From DPC Alliance's Physician Survey | Hint Health

Georgia has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country. African American women in the state are almost three times as likely as white women to die from a pregnancy-related cause, according to data from Augusta University’s Medical College of Georgia. Those numbers have been documented for years.

Dr. Michelle Cooke is a family physician and certified menopause practitioner. She trained at Spelman College and Morehouse School of Medicine, both in Atlanta. She completed her residency at Atlanta Medical Center before entering the employed practice setting.

She opened Sol Direct Primary Care off Cascade Road in southwest Atlanta in May 2023. In May 2024, the practice relocated to East Point in Fulton County. Sol is the first DPC practice in southwest Atlanta, and its clinical focus is built around Black women’s health.

At the 2026 DPC Summit in New Orleans, held July 16 to 19, Cooke received the DPC Physician of the Year Award.

What the Practice Is Built Around

Sol’s individual membership runs at $175 a month for the Sol Complete plan. The DPC Alliance’s 2026 physician survey found the national average at $98.64, so Sol sits above that benchmark. Cooke sees patients for family medicine, women’s health, menopause care, chronic disease management, and lifestyle medicine. She also runs a physician-led weight management program offering GLP-1 therapy and metabolic health support.

Cooke has described wanting the practice to feel like a space patients are at ease in, according to the Atlanta Voice.

That framing is deliberate. For patients with documented reasons to approach medical institutions with caution, a physician who shares their background and trained at HBCUs starts from a different position.

The DPC structure changes what a visit can cover. Fee-for-service primary care runs on volume. The AAFP’s 2024 DPC data brief found the average DPC panel at about 400 patients. For patients managing chronic conditions, working through menopause, or dealing with diagnoses that benefit from ongoing monitoring, that difference in scale matters.

The Tension the Model Lives Inside

East Point sits in Fulton County. The practice’s clinical scope is built around Black women’s health, in a state where the documented maternal health data is among the worst in the country.

DPC and health equity don’t automatically go together. The monthly fee that makes the model work for a physician also creates a barrier for patients without discretionary income. At $175 a month, Sol’s membership costs more than many DPC practices, and the patients most in need of consistent primary care are often the ones least able to pay for it.

Georgia’s Pathways to Coverage program offers Medicaid to qualifying residents, with qualifying activities that include employment, community service, and vocational training. A patient who doesn’t qualify for public coverage and can’t afford a monthly membership falls into neither system. That gap is not specific to Sol Direct Primary Care, but it runs through any serious conversation about DPC as a health equity strategy.

One structural answer to that tension is the relationship itself. A physician in regular contact with a patient has more context to work through coverage options with them, connect patients to assistance programs, and catch warning signs before they reach a crisis. Whether that scales into a solution for documented disparities is a question a single practice can’t resolve.

Sol Direct Primary Care is one attempt in one ZIP code.

As of August 2026, the practice is accepting waitlist registrations.