the NUANCE // a community health podcast.

Jeff Tkach serves as the Chief Impact Officer for the Rodale Institute. He is responsible for expanding Rodale Institute’s global influence in healing people and the planet by unlocking the transformational power of regenerative organic agriculture.As Chief Impact Officer, Jeff leads the development and execution of the Institute’s core strategies, overseeing opportunities for partnership and co-investment that drive positive outcomes for Rodale’s philanthropic and programmatic initiatives.For 70 years, Rodale Institute has been leading game-changing research, expertly training farmers, and educating the community to help heal broken agricultural systems. Together, we can transform not only the way we farm, but what and how we eat. We can harness the power of regenerative organic agriculture to secure the future health of the planet and transform lives.

Professor Felice Jacka is Director of the Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University and an international leader in the transformative field of Nutritional Psychiatry research. She is also founder and president of the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research (ISNPR) and immediate past president of the Australian Alliance for the Prevention of Mental Disorders. She has been responsible for the development of a highly innovative field of research establishing diet and nutrition as of importance to common mental disorders. These include the first studies to document a role for diet in adolescent depression, the first study to identify both maternal and early life nutrition as important predictors of children’s mental health, and the first trial to show that dietary improvement can address depression. The results of the studies she has conducted have been highly influentialProfessor Jacka’s current research focuses closely on the links between diet, gut health, and mental and brain health. Professor Jacka has published >160 peer-reviewed scientific papers, the majority in high-impact journals in the mental health field including the American Journal of Psychiatry, BMC Medicine and Lancet Psychiatry. She is listed in the top ten most highly-cited researchers in mood disorders in Australia (Scopus).She has written a book for the lay public called ‘Brain Changer’, which we HIGHLY recommend. She is also passionate about prompting changes by policy-makers to improve the global food environment.

Dr. Marney A. White, PhD, MS, is a clinical psychologist, specializing in eating and weight disorders. In addition to her appointment as Associate Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the Yale School of Public Health, she holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Psychiatry (Yale School of Medicine). Dr. White has provided clinical training and supervision for graduate and postdoctoral trainees at Yale University, where she is a faculty member in the departments of psychiatry and public health. She has written more than 150 scientific journal articles and book chapters on eating disorders and weight problems, and has conducted eating disorders treatment studies funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association. Current projects include curriculum-based interventions to improve student mental health on college campuses. Professor White's innovative "Self Care" course, Health Behavior Change: From evidence to action, is now publicly available through Coursera.

Dr. Stacy Beller Stryer is a board certified pediatrician and associate medical director for Park Rx America, where she educates providers, schools and park agencies on benefits of nature and nature prescriptions; and works with the core team to strategize ways to move this mission forward. She is also a frequent speaker at conferences and other media outlets and has published on this topic. Dr. Beller Stryer served as the health promotion and disease prevention coordinator within the Indian Health Service, and a pediatric subject expert for an online health website, Revolution Health. She also works with her local school system to increase awareness and promote outdoor classrooms and green schoolyards and serves on Governor Hogan's task force for "Project Green Classrooms.” She wants others to benefit from nature as much as she has through the years.

Dr. Sara Warber received her MD from Michigan State University. She is the former co-director of the U-M Integrative Medicine program and was a practicing physician at the Integrative Medicine Clinic. Her research interests include Human-environment relationships, Integrative medicine and Reproductive and Women’s Health. In 2000, Dr. Warber became a founding diplomat of the American Board of Holistic Medicine, and, in 2003, she expanded her clinical practice to include Holistic Women’s Health and Holistic Herbal Medicine consultations. In 2014 Dr. Warber won a Fulbright Scholarship to study integrative medicine therapies and environmental values at the University of Exeter in Cornwall, United Kingdom. Dr. Warber retired as a professor at the University of Michigan Department of Family Medicine and remains with the Department as an active emeritus professor.

Dr. Ellen Vora received her MD from Columbia University medical school and received her BA from Yale University in English. She is a board-certified psychiatrist, acupuncturist and yoga teacher. Dr. Vora takes a holistic, functional-medicine approach in addressing mental health through focusing on diet, sleep, stress and other lifestyle changes. She considers the whole person to identify the root cause of the problem. Dr. Vora has done corporate wellness presentations at companies such as Etsy, Refinery29, and Allen and Co! She also leads an online small group to teach participants holistic techniques to manage depression, anxiety, insomnia, ADHD, or bipolar and creating optimal mental health.

Our guest today is Dr. Aly Cohen, a triple board-certified doc in internal medicine, rheumatology, and integrative medicine, who also is a trained specialist in environmental health. She specializes in rheumatologist ailments as well as mental health issues, dementia prevention, obesity, and women’s health. Her practice founded in 2011, Integrative Rheumatology Associates P.C., focuses on both traditional western medical management of rheumatological ailments, as well as integrative options for total “wellness”, such as acupuncture, diet and exercise counseling, environmental toxin counseling, and much more! Dr. Cohen’s work in environmental chemical exposure has also led her to collaborate with the Environmental Working Group. She co-edited the "Integrative Environmental Health" textbook for the Weil/Oxford University Press academic series in 2017 and her new book, “Non-Toxic: Living Healthy in a Chemical World”, was just released in September, 2020, which is a book I HIGHLY recommend!