2025 Recipient:
Elizabeth Blackburn, PhDRead Bio ▾
Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn is a pioneering molecular biologist whose groundbreaking discoveries have shaped modern understanding of cellular aging, disease, and genetic stability. During her postdoctoral research at Yale, she identified a repeating DNA sequence at the ends of chromosomes in the protozoan Tetrahymena, recognizing it as a protective structure now known as the telomere. Her early work revealed the evolutionary conservation and protective function of these telomeric repeats, setting the stage for one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century.
In collaboration with Jack Szostak, Blackburn demonstrated that telomeric sequences safeguard chromosomes from degradation, a discovery that helped explain how cells preserve critical genetic information through countless divisions. This insight led her to hypothesize the existence of an enzyme capable of maintaining these chromosome ends. Working with her graduate student Carol Greider, she uncovered telomerase—a previously unknown enzyme with reverse transcriptase activity that replenishes telomeres and resolves the long-standing “end-replication problem” in DNA biology. Their discovery not only transformed molecular biology but opened profound new avenues for understanding aging, cancer, and chronic disease.
Throughout her career at UC Berkeley and later at UC San Francisco, Dr. Blackburn continued to expand the world’s knowledge of telomere biology, including how telomerase activity influences cellular lifespan and disease susceptibility. Her research demonstrated that telomerase preserves chromosomal integrity, preventing the rapid loss of genetic information and slowing cellular aging. This work ultimately earned her, along with Greider and Szostak, the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Beyond the laboratory, Dr. Blackburn has been an influential voice in policy and ethics. She served on the President’s Council on Bioethics, advocating for evidence-based decision-making and stem cell research. Her leadership extended to roles such as President of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and service on scientific advisory boards dedicated to regenerative medicine and public health.
Today, her research continues to explore the intersection of telomeres, stress, and health, including the impact of psychological and environmental factors on cellular aging. She has contributed to pioneering studies on the effects of chronic stress and mindfulness practices on telomere length, further reinforcing the connection between lifestyle behaviors and long-term well-being.
A scientist of extraordinary vision and integrity, Dr. Blackburn’s discoveries laid the foundation for major advancements in cancer research, aging science, and lifestyle medicine. Her work continues to inspire new generations of researchers seeking to understand—and improve—the fundamental mechanisms that sustain human health.
2024 Recipient:
Nathan PritikinRead Bio ▾
Nathan Pritikin was a pioneering health researcher and advocate known for his groundbreaking work in heart disease prevention and reversal. Born in Chicago in 1915, Pritikin was diagnosed with severe coronary artery disease in his early forties, with a cholesterol level peaking at 280 mg/dL.
Determined to save his own life, he began researching the link between diet and cardiovascular health, ultimately developing a low-fat, high-carbohydrate, low-cholesterol diet combined with rigorous exercise. His approach successfully lowered his cholesterol below 150 mg/dL, alleviating his heart disease symptoms and enabling him to share his findings with the public through books, lectures, and diet clinics. His diet helped countless individuals reverse chronic conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.
Though he had no formal medical training, Pritikin’s work profoundly impacted the medical community. He published several best-selling books, founded the Pritikin Longevity Center in Santa Barbara in 1974 (later moved to Santa Monica), and collaborated on over 100 scientific papers published in esteemed medical journals. Through his live-in programs, thousands saw rapid improvements in their health. Pritikin’s influence endures, with a modernized Pritikin Program still in operation.
Following his death in 1985, an autopsy published in the New England Journal of Medicine confirmed his arteries were clear, validating his lifelong dedication to the power of diet and lifestyle in disease prevention.
2023 Recipient:
Hans Diehl, DrHSC, MPH, FACNRead Bio ▾
Dr. Diehl, founder of the Lifestyle Medicine Institute and the Complete Health Improvement Program (CHIP), was a clinical professor of preventive medicine at Loma Linda University and a founding member of ACLM and its Board of Advisors. Dr. Diehl established the Lifestyle Medicine Institute more than 25 years ago.
His pioneering efforts with Nathan Pritikin and Denis Burkitt, MD, have shown that simple lifestyle changes can prevent, treat, and reverse many of today’s diseases.
Dr. Diehl’s work as a lifestyle interventionist, researcher, educator, and speaker has found its most powerful expression in CHIP, a community-based, 12-week, 40-hour intensive educational lifestyle intervention, which draws together healthcare professionals, faith communities, corporations, schools, and community infrastructures, such as restaurants and grocery chains.
As the first research and education director at the Pritikin Longevity Center, he aspired to make better health accessible to the masses, developing this affordable program designed to arrest and reverse society’s most common chronic diseases. CHIP has empowered countless individuals to make lasting, positive changes in their health. His co-authored books Health Power, the Optimal Diet Cookbook, Take Charge of Your Health, and You-Turn have been translated into 36 languages with a circulation of over two million.
Remembering Dr. Hans Diehl
2022 Recipient:
Jack LaLanneRead Bio ▾
A self-professed “junk food junkie” until age 15, LaLanne was in such poor health as a child that he stopped attending school for six months. After witnessing a life-changing health lecture by Paul Bragg in 1929, LaLanne resolved to change his lifestyle and joined the local YMCA, where he took up wrestling and eventually became an AAU champion. He also discovered weightlifting and, in 1936, opened the first modern health club, “The Jack LaLanne Physical Culture Studio.” He later earned a chiropractic degree, though he never used it.
LaLanne advocated for exercise and nutrition at a time when modern home conveniences, such as TV ownership, made Americans increasingly less likely to engage in physical activity or care about the food they ate. He and Elaine countered this trend by developing a popular television exercise program, “The Jack LaLanne Show,” that aired fitness programming directly to families in their homes for 34 years. One of LaLanne’s favorite sayings was, “Exercise is King, Nutrition is Queen. Put them together, and you have a kingdom.”
LaLanne is credited with creating prototypes of popular exercise equipment, including the weight selector, wall pulley, leg extension, resistance band, and squat machine, now known as the Smith Machine, still found in gyms across the world today. He also created the first protein drink, “Instant Breakfast,” and protein bars.
“If Jack were alive today, he would be humbled, honored, and grateful, as I am, for the prestigious ACLM Lifetime Achievement Award,” Elaine LaLanne said. “Throughout our almost 60 years together, he repeatedly said ‘All I want to do is help people to help themselves.’ The principles that ACLM advocates were his lifestyle; he lived it, breathed it, and taught it.
“In fact, he helped me change from a smoking, junk food junkie to a 96-year-old who is still here and lives a healthy, happy life,” she said. “My family and I are deeply moved at this recognition of lifetime achievement by ACLM.”
2022 Recipient:
Kenneth Cooper, MDRead Bio ▾
Dr. Cooper has advocated for exercise as medicine nationally and internationally for more than five decades. Early in his career, the Oklahoma City native produced scientific evidence to overcome resistance from many in the medical community about his views on the powerful impact of exercise on health outcomes. He believed in the early adoption of healthy lifestyle behaviors; his philosophy has been “It is easier to maintain good health through proper exercise, diet and emotional balance than to regain it once it is lost.”
Two years after the publication of Aerobics, Dr. Cooper founded The Cooper Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting lifelong health and wellness through research, education, and advocacy. In 1989, The Journal of the American Medical Association published The Cooper Institute’s landmark study showing that being physically fit substantially decreased the risk for all-cause mortality.
Dr. Cooper is passionate about reversing the childhood obesity epidemic and was instrumental in the State of Texas passing Senate Bill 530, a law requiring enhanced physical education levels and testing in schools. Since 1970, Dr. Cooper is founder and chairman of Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas ̶ home of his six health and wellness companies and The Cooper Institute ̶ where his son Tyler Cooper, MD, MPH, serves as President and CEO.
Dr. Cooper also has collaborated with major food corporations like PepsiCo to eliminate trans fats in foods in snack products, a trend other companies have followed worldwide.
“I’m honored to receive this lifetime achievement award alongside my friend Elaine LaLanne,” Dr. Cooper said. “The late Jack LaLanne and I both shared a passion for physical fitness and longevity and tried to set an example for people to follow. My goal is to live as long as Jack did, to 96 years of age. That’s why in my 91st year, I’m still working and enjoying life to the fullest."
"If people follow our guidelines, you can ‘square off the curve’ ̶ live a long, healthy life to the fullest, then die suddenly,” he said. “If that happens to me, I would say ‘Praise the Lord; it’s been a wonderful life and I have no regrets.’”
2018 Recipient:
John A. McDougall, MDRead Bio ▾
John A. McDougall, MD has been studying, writing, and speaking out about the effects of nutrition on disease for over 50 years. A graduate of Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine, Dr. McDougall performed his internship at Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, and his medical residency at the University of Hawaii. He is certified as an internist by the Board of Internal Medicine and the National Board of Medical Examiners.
He and his wife, Mary, are also the authors of several nationally best-selling books as well as the co-founders of Dr. McDougall’s Right Foods, which produces high-quality vegetarian cuisine to make it easier for people to eat well on the go.
Dr. McDougall is the founder and director of the nationally renowned McDougall Program, a ten-day residential program that he and Mary host in Santa Rosa, CA, where medical miracles occur through diet and lifestyle changes. He has cared for thousands of patients for five decades.
His program not only promotes a broad range of dramatic and lasting health benefits but, most importantly, can also reverse serious illnesses, including high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and others, all without the use of drugs.
2017 Recipient:
T. Colin Campbell, PhDRead Bio ▾
For decades T. Colin Campbell, PhD has been at the forefront of nutrition education and research. Dr. Campbell’s expertise and scientific interests encompass relationships between diet and disease, particularly the causation of cancer. His legacy, the China Project, is one of the most comprehensive studies of health and nutrition ever conducted. The New York Times has recognized the study as the “Grand Prix of epidemiology”.
Dr. Campbell is the coauthor of the bestselling book The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-term Health and the New York Times bestsellers Whole and The Low-Carb Fraud. He has been featured in several documentaries, including the blockbuster Forks Over Knives, Eating You Alive, Food Matters, Plant Pure Nation, and others.
He is the founder of the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies and the online Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate in partnership with eCornell. Dr. Campbell has conducted original research both in laboratory experiments and in large-scale human studies; received over 70 grants, years of peer-reviewed research funding (mostly with NIH), served on grant review panels of multiple funding agencies, actively participated in the development of national and international nutrition policy, authored over 300 research papers and given hundreds of lectures around the world.
He was trained at Cornell University (M.S., Ph.D.) and MIT (Research Associate) in nutrition, biochemistry and toxicology. Dr. Campbell spent 10 years on the faculty of Virginia Tech’s Department of Biochemistry and Nutrition before returning to Cornell in 1975 where he presently holds his Endowed Chair as the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry in the Division of Nutritional Sciences.
2016 Recipient:
Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., MD, FACLMRead Bio ▾
Dr. Esselstyn received his BA from Yale University and his MD from Case Western Reserve University. In 1956, pulling the No. 6 oar as a member of the victorious United States rowing team, he was awarded a gold medal at the Olympic Games. He was trained as a surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic and at St. George’s Hospital in London.
In 1968, as an Army surgeon in Vietnam, he was awarded the Bronze Star. During his association with the Cleveland Clinic, which began in 1968, Dr. Esselstyn served as president of the Staff and as a member of the Board of Governors. He chaired the Clinic’s Breast Cancer Task Force and headed its Section on Thyroid and Parathyroid Surgery.
In 1991, Dr. Esselstyn served as president of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons, That same year he organized the first National Conference on the Elimination of Coronary Artery Disease. In 1997, he chaired a follow-up conference, the Summit on Cholesterol and Coronary Disease, which brought together more than 500 physicians and healthcare workers.
In April 2005, Dr. Esselstyn became the first recipient of the Benjamin Spock Award for Compassion in Medicine. He received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Cleveland Clinic Alumni Association in 2009. In September 2010, he received the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame Award. Dr. Esselstyn received the 2013 Deerfield Academy Alumni Association Heritage Award In Recognition of Outstanding Achievement & Service, and the 2013 Yale University George H.W. Bush '48 Lifetime of Leadership Award.
He’s also the recipient of the 2015 Plantrician Project Luminary Award. His scientific publications number over 150, “The Best Doctors in America” 1994-1995, published by Woodward and White, cites Dr. Esselstyn’s surgical expertise in the categories of endocrine and breast disease.
In 1995, he published his benchmark long-term nutritional research arresting and reversing coronary artery disease in severely ill patients. That same study was updated at 12 years and reviewed beyond twenty years in his book, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, making it one of the longest longitudinal studies of its type.
Dr. Esselstyn and his wife, Ann Crile Esselstyn, have followed a plant-based diet for more than 26 years. Dr. Esselstyn presently directs the cardiovascular prevention and reversal program at The Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute and serves on the Board of Directors of The Plantrician Project. The Esselstyns have four children and 10 grandchildren.
2015 Recipient:
Dean Ornish, MD, FACLMRead Bio ▾
The founder and president of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute, Dr. Ornish, is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He received his MD from the Baylor College of Medicine, was a clinical fellow in medicine at Harvard Medical School, and completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dean earned a BA in Humanities summa cum laude from the University of Texas in Austin, where he gave the baccalaureate address.
For over 36 years, Dr. Ornish has directed clinical research demonstrating, for the first time, that comprehensive lifestyle changes may begin to reverse even severe coronary heart disease, without drugs or surgery. Recently, Medicare agreed to provide coverage for this program, the first time that Medicare has covered a program of comprehensive lifestyle changes. He directed the first randomized controlled trial demonstrating that comprehensive lifestyle changes may stop or reverse the progression of early-stage prostate cancer.
His current research showed that comprehensive lifestyle changes affect gene expression, “turning on” disease-preventing genes and “turning off” genes that promote cancer and heart disease, as well as the first study showing that these lifestyle changes reverse aging by lengthening telomeres, the ends of our chromosomes which control aging (in collaboration with Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2009).
He is the author of six books, all national bestsellers, including Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease, Eat More, Weigh Less, Love & Survival, and The Spectrum.