Trailblazer Award

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The Trailblazer Award recognizes an individual who is currently providing leadership in the field of lifestyle medicine, helping strengthen the foundation laid by others, while advancing it through innovation.

Previous Trailblazer Award Recipients

2024: Ron Stout, MD, MPH, FACLM

Ron Stout, MD, MPH, FACLM, is the President and CEO of the Ardmore Institute of Health (AIH), a nonprofit foundation focused on promoting healthy environments and lifestyle to prevent and reverse chronic disease. In his capacity at AIH, he has helped champion a wide array of lifestyle medicine initiatives, such as the Full Plate Living Program and ACLM’s LEADR Curriculum, while also providing seed funding for the Foundations of Lifestyle Medicine Board Review course and the establishment of the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine. He’s also been a spark to ignite lifestyle medicine infusion into the AAFP.

He previously served as Procter & Gamble’s North American Medical Director and Global Medical Leader for multiple business sectors, including Beauty and Health. He has held leadership roles with the American Board of Preventive Medicine, the American College of Preventive Medicine, and the American College of Occupational & Environmental Medicine. As an ACLM Fellow, he is an advocate for lifestyle medicine, has previously served on the American College of Lifestyle Medicine board, and was instrumental in starting ACLM on its journey leading to induction into the AMA House of Delegates.

He personally embodies the power of lifestyle medicine that enabled him, following a tragic accident, to progress from being paralyzed with a medical prognosis of being wheelchair-bound to an active lifestyle.

2023: James Rippe, MD

Dr Rippe is founder and director of Rippe Lifestyle Medicine, a professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, and founder and editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine.

Dr. Rippe is regarded as a leading authority on preventive cardiology, health, and fitness, and a pioneer of the fitness walking movement. He graduated cum laude from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. He founded and directs both the Rippe Lifestyle Institute in Shrewsbury, MA, and the Rippe Health Assessment at Florida Hospital Celebration Health in Celebration, FL. The Rippe Lifestyle Institute promotes health and disease prevention research and communication. The Rippe Health Assessment provides comprehensive health evaluations for high-performance individuals.

Rippe’s main goal is empowering people to take charge of their own health through simple lifestyle changes. His numerous books include Fit Over Forty, The Healthy Heart for Dummies, and The Healthy Heart Cookbook for Dummies. He has frequently appeared on television shows such as Today, Good Morning America, and PBS’s Body Watch and has served as a health and fitness consultant for the Television Food Network. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal  have featured his work.

Rippe is an enthusiastic athlete who holds a black belt in karate. He also regularly jogs, skis, and windsurfs.

2022: Liana Lianov, MD, MPH, FACLM, FACPM, DipABLM

As an innovative global leader in lifestyle medicine, Liana Lianov, MD, MPH, FACLM, FACPM, DipABLM, helped advance the movement for integrating positive psychology into health care. She led the development of the original lifestyle medicine core competencies for physicians and health professionals, which was expanded to include positive psychology-based knowledge and skills. She served as the chair of the Happiness Science and Positive Health Committee of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM), lead faculty for the ACLM Physician and Health Professional Wellbeing Program and vice-chair of the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine.

Dr. Lianov is the former president of the Positive Health and Wellbeing Division of the International Positive Psychology Association. Other notable past roles include president of the ACLM, director of the Healthy Lifestyles Division of the American Medical Association, and board regent for the American College of Preventive Medicine. She also directed programs in heart disease, stroke, and cancer prevention at the California Department of Health Services.

In 2018, Dr. Lianov convened the inaugural Summit on Happiness Science in Health Care, cosponsored by ACLM and Dell Medical School. This event led to scholarly publications and a groundbreaking book on integrating happiness science into medical practice, Roots of Positive Change: Optimizing Health Care with Positive Psychology. To further this mission, she founded the Global Positive Health Institute, which provides positive psychology education and practical tools for health professionals to use in their clinical practices and support their personal well-being.

2018: Wayne Dysinger, MD, MPH, DipABLM, FACPM, FACLM

Dr. Dysinger currently serves as Chief Executive Officer for Lifestyle Medicine Solutions, a new model primary care concept built on Lifestyle Medicine principles and a direct primary care funding mechanism. He is also the Medical Director of the Complete Health Improvement Program (CHIP) and consults and teaches on Lifestyle Medicine issues around the world.

Dr. Dysinger was previously Chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Loma Linda University. He is a past President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, is on the board of the American College of Preventive Medicine, and has worked in various capacities with the American Medical Association and the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research.

Dr. Dysinger earned his M.D. degree from Loma Linda University School of Medicine (1986), and his MPH from Loma Linda University School of Public Health (1990). He has previously worked in Guam, Atlanta, and Dartmouth.

2017: Michael Greger, MD, DipABLM, FACLM

As a physician, New York Times bestselling author, and internationally recognized professional speaker on a number of important public health issues, Dr. Greger has lectured at the Conference on World Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, and the International Bird Flu Summit, among countless other symposia and institutions. He testified before Congress; has appeared on shows such as The Colbert Report and The Dr. Oz Show; and was invited as an expert witness in defense of Oprah Winfrey at the infamous “meat defamation” trial. In 2017, he was honored with the ACLM Lifestyle Medicine Trailblazer Award.

Dr. Greger’s most recent scientific publications in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Critical Reviews in Microbiology, Family and Community Health, and the International Journal of Food Safety, Nutrition, and Public Health explore the public health implications of industrialized animal agriculture.

Dr. Greger is also licensed as a general practitioner specializing in clinical nutrition and is a founding member and Fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. He was featured on the Healthy Living Channel promoting his latest nutrition DVDs and was honored to teach part of Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s esteemed nutrition course at Cornell University. Dr. Greger’s nutrition work can be found at NutritionFacts.org, a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit charity.

He is the author of Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching and Carbophobia: The Scary Truth Behind America’s Low Carb Craze. His latest book, How Not to Die, became an instant New York Times Best Seller. Dr. Greger is a graduate of the Cornell University School of Agriculture and the Tufts University School of Medicine.

Dr. Greger is proud to be a Council of Directors member of the global voice for lifestyle as medicine, the True Health Initiative (THI). This is a growing coalition of more than 360 world experts representing 35 countries. It is an unprecedented assembly that includes physicians, university Deans, former Surgeon Generals, Olympic athletes, chefs, environmental professionals, and a diverse group of nutritionists. Together they offer clarity over confusion and support the foundational principles of healthy eating and healthy living.

All speaking fees and proceeds Dr. Greger receives from the sale of his books and DVDs are donated to charity.

2016: Neal Barnard, MD, FACC

Dr. Barnard is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, DC. In 1985, he founded the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit organization that promotes good nutrition through education and advocacy, conducts clinical research, promotes higher ethical standards in human and animal research, and provides direct medical care. In 2015, he founded Barnard Medical Center, a nonprofit primary care clinic integrating nutrition into patient care. In his medical practice, Dr. Barnard works with patients with diabetes, obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and chronic pain in innovative clinical trials, including a groundbreaking study of dietary interventions in type 2 diabetes, funded by the National Institutes of Health. His research contributed to the acceptance of plant-based diets in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

In 2015, he was named a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology. Dr. Barnard has authored more than 80 scientific publications and 18 books and has hosted four PBS television programs on nutrition and health. Dr. Barnard works with the Medical Society of the District of Columbia and the American Medical Association, of which he is a Lifetime Member, to bring forward policy improvements calling for healthier food in hospitals, schools, and federal food assistance programs. Dr. Barnard is the editor-in-chief of the Nutrition Guide for Clinicians, a textbook made available to all U.S. medical students.

Originally from Fargo, North Dakota, Dr. Barnard received his M.D. degree at the George Washington University School of Medicine and completed his residency at the same institution. He practiced at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York before returning to Washington to found the Physicians Committee.

2015: John Kelly, MD, MPH, LM Intensivist, DipABLM, FACLM

Dr. John H. Kelly is the founding President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. Medicine is a second career for Dr. John and he received the AMA Foundation’s Excellence in Medicine Leadership Award for his work with ACLM in 2004 as a young physician–at age 55. He received his BS in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from Shepard University (1996; McMurran Scholar, Summa Cum Laude), his MD from Loma Linda University (2000) and his MPH in Epidemiology from Loma Linda University (2002; with honors).

Known internationally for his passion for and leadership in the field of lifestyle medicine, he is an invited speaker on the topics of lifestyle medicine and epigenetics. He served as Co-PI for research on the use of lifestyle interventions to reverse diabetes in the Marshall Islands (a $2-million federally-funded study). He has published research articles and co-authored a book chapter on nutrition as medicine.

Dr. Kelly was the recipient of the inaugural ACLM Trailblazer Award for his leadership in lifestyle medicine. He launched one of the first clinical fellowships in LM at the Black Hills Health and Education Center near Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota, where he now serves as Medical Director for a residential lifestyle treatment center in the Black Hills.

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