Doha – April 30, 2025: Healthcare practitioners from across the region met to promote the use of lifestyle medicine at a forum organized by the Institute for Population Health (IPH) of Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q).

The event, titled 'Lifestyle Medicine: Pathway to Optimal Health,' provided insights into how evidence-based lifestyle medicine interventions can prevent, manage, and even reverse the overwhelming burden of chronic diseases for patients and communities.

Expert lifestyle medicine healthcare practitioners from Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and the United States presented a series of informative lectures at the forum. Additionally, they participated in Q&A sessions and panel discussions on innovations and emerging trends in lifestyle medicine. The forum also analyzed and discussed the most effective strategies for incorporating and implementing lifestyle medicine into healthcare systems.

Lifestyle medicine promotes the use of evidence-based lifestyle interventions to promote good health and prevent, manage and in some cases reverse chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, hypertension (high blood pressure), heart disease, and poor mental health, among many other conditions. It can even be effective at reducing the risk of dementia, stroke, and certain forms of cancer. Its practice revolves around the promotion of evidence-based positive lifestyle interventions such as eating a healthy diet, engaging in regular exercise, abstaining from the use of harmful substances, getting adequate sleep, and being socially connected.

The IPH is a leading advocate for lifestyle medicine approaches and works to bring practitioners from across the region and the wider world together to promote the discipline.

Dr. Ravinder Mamtani, vice dean for population health and lifestyle medicine at WCM-Q, said: 'We believe that lifestyle medicine gives physicians and healthcare systems an extremely powerful set of tools to help people protect their health and the health of their families. Healthy lifestyles provide the foundation stones of the health of every single person and of every healthy society, so we are extremely happy that so many leading voices in the lifestyle medicine movement joined us at this forum to promote this vitally important discipline.'

The expert speakers at the event included representatives of Hamad Medical Corporation, the Primary Health Care Corporation, the Ministry of Defense of Qatar, Arabian Gulf University Medical Center in Bahrain, the Ministry of Health and Prevention and Dubai Health in the UAE, and the Global Positive Health Institute in the United States.

Dr. Sohaila Cheema, assistant dean for the institute for population health, said: 'Lifestyle medicine has many strengths: it empowers people to take control of their own health, and it is not only cost-effective for governments but also incredibly effective at preventing and managing a wide variety of chronic diseases. Also, by complementing and supporting conventional medical approaches, lifestyle medicine offers a holistic approach to health. We firmly believe that greater emphasis on lifestyle medicine approaches can significantly enhance the health and well-being of communities worldwide.'