Edward M. Phillips, MD, ILM Founder & Director
Edward M. Phillips, MD, is Assistant Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School and is Founder and Director of the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine (ILM) at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital www.InstituteofLifestyleMedicine.org. In his work at the ILM he has directed 23 live CME programs starting in India in 2006 and continuing with twice yearly courses sponsored by the Harvard Medical School Department of Global and Continuing Education, plus a suite of online CME modules completed by over 20,000 clinicians from 115 countries.
In 2015, Phillips began his role as Chief of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation Services and is now Whole Health Medical Director at VA Boston Healthcare System. He is integrating Whole Health-Lifestyle Medicine training for 122,000 health professional trainees across the Veterans Health Administration in his role as National Whole Health Education Champion for Professional Trainees. Additionally, Phillips is a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (FACSM) and served on the executive council that developed the Exercise is Medicine global initiative. He is co-author of Organize Your Emotions, Optimize Your Life: Decode Your Emotional DNA and Thrive (Harvard Health Publications, William Morrow, 2016) and ACSM’s Exercise is Medicine, A Clinician’s Guide to Exercise Prescription (Wolters-Kluwer, 2009), as well as >80 scientific publications.
He serves on the Advisory Board of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine; the Health Sector of the United States National Physical Activity Plan; and, is a founding board member of the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine. He is co-founder and co-director of the Lifestyle Medicine Education Collaborative (LMEd) www.LifestyleMedicineEducation.org which is working to incorporate nutrition, exercise, self-care, and behavior change into U.S. medical school curricula. As site-PI for the Health Resources Services Administration Preventive Medicine Training Grant (2010-2013) (2014-2018) (2019-2023), he is educating Yale Preventive Medicine residents in lifestyle medicine.
Dr. Phillips is an active clinician and teacher who speaks and consults nationally guiding a broad-based effort to reduce lifestyle-related death, disease, and costs through clinician directed interventions with patients. He is a graduate of SUNY Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and the medical school honored him with its Distinguished Alumni Award for accomplishments in lifestyle medicine. The President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition has recognized Dr. Phillips, ILM, and LMEd with its Community Leadership Award. He appears on national media including Good Morning America, ESPN radio, Huffington Post, Slate, and Time Magazine. He co-hosted WBUR’s Magic Pill, a daily exercise podcast from Boston’s NPR affiliate, which was awarded an Edward R. Murrow award for Excellence in Innovation in 2017 and is co-host of the newly released podcast, “Food, We Need to Talk.”
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Elizabeth Pegg Frates, MD, ILM Director of Medical Student Education
Beth Frates, MD, is trained as a physiatrist and is a health and wellness coach. Her expertise is in the area of lifestyle medicine and she works to empower patients to reach their optimal level of wellness by adopting healthy habits.
She joined Dr. Phillips at the ILM at its inception and worked with him to create and run the CME programs Active Lives and Tools for Promoting Healthy Change. At Harvard Medical School, Dr. Frates created the first Lifestyle Medicine Interest Group in 2008, which is still thriving today. As a member of the Board of Directors of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, Beth helped to shape the scope of this new specialty nationally. She is an award-winning teacher at Harvard Medical School, where she is an assistant clinical professor. She developed and taught a college lifestyle medicine curriculum at the Harvard Extension School, which is one of the most popular courses offered at the school. She shared a lifestyle medicine syllabus, which can be downloaded through the ACLM website, in hopes that her work can serve as a template for other instructors and professors hoping to teach a course in lifestyle medicine. As the Director of Wellness Programming at the Stroke Institute for Research and Recovery at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Dr. Frates has created and implemented a 12-month wellness program for stroke survivors and their caregivers. She is co-author of the book “Life After Stroke: The Guide to Recovering Your Health and Preventing Another Stroke” and co-author of three chapters on behavior change in different medical textbooks. And, most recently, she co-authored “The Lifestyle Medicine Handbook: An Introduction to the Power of Healthy Habits” which was ranked in the top 20 by Book Authority for medical books released in 2018.
Dr. Frates is passionate about developing programs focused on lifestyle medicine and wellness. Connect with her on Twitter: @BethFratesMD or visit her website: www.BethFratesMD.com