Philip R. Nader Legacy of Health Lectureship
Dr. Kofi Essel will deliver the 2024 Nader Legacy of Health Lectureship on October 3 at 12 PM.
This year's Lectureship is titled Food as Medicine in Pediatrics: A Necessary Responsibility. Register today!
Dr. Essel will explore the pivotal role of "food as medicine" in promoting community health and well-being. Keynote speaker Dr. Kofi Essel will emphasize the importance of a holistic, family-centered approach that extends beyond adults to include the individual child and the entire household. He will highlight how food-based interventions, such as medically-tailored meals and produce prescriptions, hold immense potential to prevent and manage chronic conditions, particularly when leveraging the reach of large healthcare organizations. Significantly, the lecture will underscore the critical responsibility of healthcare providers and partners in championing "food as medicine" and empowering families to harness the transformative power of nutrition as a cornerstone of primary prevention and population-based care.
Kofi D. Essel, MD, MPH, FAAP
Kofi D. Essel, MD, MPH, FAAP, is the inaugural Food as Medicine Program Director at Elevance Health. As a core member of the Health Outcomes Organization team, he works to coordinate with the broader social impact strategy, health equity, and medical policy initiatives throughout the enterprise. He leads efforts in designing innovative approaches to address diet related chronic diseases and social risk using novel food interventions.
Dr. Essel is a board-certified community pediatrician at Children’s National Hospital (CNH) and Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the George Washington University (GWU) School of Medicine & Health Sciences in Washington, D.C., most recently serving as the Director of the GWU Culinary Medicine Program. Dr. Essel has dedicated his career to advocacy/research around healthcare and public health workforce training, health disparities, and community engagement, with expertise and national recognition in the areas of addressing diet-related chronic disease and food insecurity with patients and families.
Dr. Essel sits on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on Obesity Solutions’ Lived Experience Innovation Collaborative and was nationally recognized by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation for helping to create an innovative curriculum to enhance pediatric resident trainee skills on nutrition related disease management.
Dr. Essel sits on the board of directors for the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) and serves as physician advisor for the Partnership for a Healthier America’s “Veggies Early & Often” campaign. Dr. Essel is a member of the executive committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Obesity. He also co-authored a national toolkit for pediatric providers to address food insecurity in their clinical settings with the AAP and FRAC. Dr. Essel earned a B.S. from Emory University with a focus on human biology/anthropology and earned his M.D. and M.P.H. in Epidemiology from GWU.
About the lectureship:
The purpose of the annual Philip R. Nader Legacy of Health Lectureship and related events and activities is to promote and inspire academics, providers, public health students and community residents to stimulate the fields of primary prevention and community pediatrics. A future vision for these lectureships is to strengthen the nexus between theory and practice, and cooperation among physician, patient, family, and community. The goal is to move the needle toward an improved health status for both parents and children, by focusing on early lifecycle systems.
Read more about Philip R. Nader.
The annual Lectureship is hosted by the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living at the UTHealth School of Public Health in Austin.
