Lifestyle Medicine Provides Empowerment
This was an insightful interview with Dr. Parneet Pal. What was most striking was her observation that lifestyle medicine provides empowerment. This is not about “patient engagement” but empowering individuals to be active in changing behaviors that determine 80% or more of health. While clinical care certainly remains vital, near total reliance on a medical model for health simply no longer makes sense. The healthcare focus needs to move to empowering individuals where they live, love, work and play.
Dr. Parneet Pal is the Chief Science Officer at Wisdom Labs, a San Francisco-based company solving for stress, burnout, anxiety, and loneliness in the workplace. As a Columbia and Harvard trained physician, she focuses on the intersection of lifestyle medicine, behavior change, and technology. She provides the health and medicine expertise towards content and product development, teaches both in-person and digital programs, and leads the company’s research efforts.
Wisdom Labs believes in building wiser workplaces using the science of mindfulness, resilience, compassion and emotional intelligence. Their focus is lasting behavior change in organizations using a comprehensive suite of in-person, virtual and digital products.
Co-founded by social entrepreneur Cory Smith, the company boasts of industry stalwarts such as Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach as advisors, amongst many others.
In an in-depth conversation with BW Businessworld, she shares insights into the workings at Wisdom Labs, the tools for wiser workplaces and her own personal journey.
You have a background in medicine, what brought you to the corporate world?
I’ve had the good fortune of training at some of the premier medical institutions in the world. However, by the end of medical residency, I realized that we were very good at treating people when they were sick, but there was very little talk about prevention. And when you look at healthcare costs – not just in the United States, but globally – they are primarily attributed to the aftermath of chronic lifestyle-related disease. This refers to conditions like heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disorders, some mood disorders etc.
The good news is that the research clearly shows that up to 80-90% of these diseases are completely preventable when we pay attention to what we eat, how we move, sleep and manage our stress – in other words, our lifestyle.
So, I decided to move away from clinical practice and focus my efforts on the business of preventive wellbeing – how could I help as many people as possible stay well and not fall sick in the first place. And since we spend most of our waking lives at work, if we can create healthier workplaces, this translates to a lower chronic disease burden and fewer healthcare costs.
For more information please see original article: Lifestyle Medicine Is About Empowering Us To Take Better Control Of Our Health And Wellbeing Dr Parneet Pal Chief Science Officer Wisdom Labs – BW Businessworld
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