Year 4. September 22. Food For Health.
We all must eat to survive. However, what we eat and how we eat has major implications for quality of life and healthy aging. This week, members of the UCLA Department of Medicine (DoM) were given a prominent platform to share these perspectives with many supporters of UCLA Health. I am pleased that our LEADERShip in this area was recognized in this way and will use this post to share some of these perspectives along with other news that underscores how we are advancing health for all.
Clinical Nutrition Experts Share Insights on Longevity, GLP-1RAs and More at Food Forward Panel
While there is little evidence that Hippocrates is truly the source of the famous quote “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be they food,” the sentiment itself holds water: There is abundant evidence that high-quality nutrition is essential to preventing and treating disease. That is the central mission of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition and the UCLA Division of Clinical Nutrition, which last week took center stage at the annual UCLA Health System board meeting with a special panel composed of nutrition experts from the DoM.
“Food is medicine promotes health equity, improves overall health and well-being, and builds healthier communities, ultimately leading to better health outcomes and potential cost savings for individuals and the healthcare system,” panel moderator Zhaoping Li, MD — professor of medicine, center director and division chief — said.
The panel featured nutrition division LEADERS Vijaya Surampudi, MD, division clinical chief, associate director of the UCLA Medical Weight Management Clinic and co-creator of the new UCLA Adult Support Nutrition Services for Enteral, TPN Management, and Nutrition Oncology Clinics; Jonathan Jacobs, MD, PhD, gastroenterologist and co-director of the Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center at UCLA; and Steven Tan, MD, assistant clinical professor of medicine within the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition and a leader in integrative medicine. Much of their audience was composed of UCLA Health donors and friends who have or may consider supporting the center’s work.
“I think it is important for people to feel connected to the mission they are supporting,” Dr. Surampudi said. “Getting to know the clinicians and researchers helps everyone feel the greater purpose in supporting the mission, which is fighting for better health.”
During the panel, titled “Food Forward Health Care,” Dr. Surampudi gave updates on the division’s programs and progress, including the encouraging datapoint that patients with cancer who received supplemental nutrition had 25% to 37% shorter hospital stays if they visited one of our nutrition oncology clinics. Dr. Jacobs shared exciting findings from his area of research on the link between the diet and the gut microbiome — and the potential for their application to precision nutrition approaches — while Dr. Tan centered his talk on three key insights on nutrition and integrative medicine: redefining health from a holistic perspective, understanding why food is medicine, and the promise of personalized nutrition for the future of patient care. All three also covered many hot topics in popular nutrition, from the potential and pitfalls of GLP-1RAs for weight management to what the word “protein” really means on a nutrition label.
“The one key takeaway I hope attendees come away from the panel is that food forward health care has the power to transform the way we think about health and how we deliver care, with the ultimate benefit of improving patient lives,” Dr. Tan said.
Like Dr. Surampudi, Dr. Jacobs saw the panel as a chance to bring potential donors closer to the center’s work, helping them realize its value.
“These kinds of events give DoM experts the opportunity to highlight areas of need in healthcare alongside cutting edge solutions like food forward health care that can be accelerated and scaled with the support and resources that passionate donors provide,” Dr. Jacobs said.
Thank you Zhaoping, Vijaya, Jonathan and Steven for your outstanding representation of your division, the DoM and our missions!
Nutrition Missions at UCLA Get Healthy Boost from New Digestive Diseases Center and National Recognition
Our mission to advance health for all continues to build momentum, especially with regards to nutrition medicine. In our Aug. 4 newsletter we shared that UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center’s UCLA Medical Weight Management Clinic — which is housed within the DoM’s division of clinical nutrition — was named one of best medical weight loss centers in the country by Newsweek. Back in the spring, the department was thrilled to announce a $25 million gift to support the creation of the Shirley and Walter Wang Center for Integrative Digestive Health, which is ramping up to become one of the only programs of its kind in the country to specialize in treating many different diseases via the gastrointestinal system. Nutrition specialists will play a key role in this endeavor.
These developments underscore our commitment to promoting health and optimizing holistic care for our patients. The UCLA Center for Human Nutrition and the clinical nutrition division are national leaders in research on precision nutrition, or the practice of tailoring patients’ diets to prepare them for surgery, treat metabolic disease and more.
“Clinical nutrition is important because it uses diet to prevent, manage and treat diseases,” Division Chief Zhaoping Li, MD, said. “A one-size fit all approach has been proven not effective. The nutrition needs for each individual are dynamic and unique. Personalized nutrition and tailored lifestyle intervention is essential.”
I look forward to seeing how these developments amplify progress in our clinical nutrition and digestive diseases divisions!
LA VIDA Helps Patients Live Healthier
Let me now shine the spotlight on a program at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center that makes our world-class preventive care and nutrition expertise accessible beyond Westwood. LA VIDA — which stands for “Longevity and Vitality with Intentional Diet and Activity” — is a pilot lifestyle intervention program created by internist and nutrition specialist Courtney L. DeCan, MD, MPH with the support of Soma Wali, MD, FACP. Over the past two years, more than 140 patients have benefitted from the tailored nutrition advice, exercise regimens and education that LA VIDA provides.
“The most rewarding aspect of this program is two-fold, both developing a trusting relationship with patients and seeing how that safe space allows them to feel seen and understood. Then within that safe space, seeing how empowered they become,” Dr. DeCan said. “The biggest wins have been outside of weight — self-esteem and mood improvements, connection, dietary quality, physical capability and seeing patients feel capable of making lifestyle changes that allow them to reach their life goals in a sustainable way.”
LA VIDA stemmed from Dr. DeCan’s experience during her internal medicine residency, preventive medicine fellowship and master’s in public health program at UCLA, during which she studied how differences in health care access impacted outcomes in the clinic. While working towards her MPH, she was inspired to address these disparities and applied to DGSOM’s UC End Disparities Program, an initiative that aims to reduce the burden of heart disease in underserved populations. Dr. DeCan designed a two-year pilot holistic healthcare program at Olive View attempting to address the disparities she saw during her training.
“During my residency training, I often felt like there were resources missing for our patients with obesity — like those provided by UCLA’s Medical Weight Management Clinic recently named among the nation’s top centers by Newsweek, where I also now practice. Giving patients advice in clinic wasn't enough, I needed to provide a more direct link to the resources,” Dr. DeCan said. “When I started to develop the program during fellowship, the other experts I reached out to agreed, and were all very eager to get involved and support a program providing that direct link to patients.”
LA VIDA works like this: Primary care physicians at Olive View refer patients to the program who stand to benefit from significant changes to their diet and physical activity after other approaches have failed to help them lose weight. Every two weeks for six months, they take part in individual and group visits led by the multidisciplinary team. They participate in supervised exercise from community partner 3WINS Fitness and receive lifestyle medicine education led by Dr. DeCan on topics including stress management, sleep, and mindful eating developed by UCLA’s Stephanie Young, MPH, PsyD. Content also includes nutrition education led by OVMC dietician Alejandra Perez on healthy, accessible, and affordable nutrition. The program is conducted in both Spanish and English. Leading the groups in both languages, increases accessibility to the participant population: 81% of those enrolled in identify as Latino, reflecting the community served by Olive View-UCLA Medical Center. The program has seen an age range of those in their 20s to their 70s. Patients are also prescribed anti-obesity medications (like GLP1 receptor agonists) when deemed appropriate.
“We are now in an era of effective medications [such as GLP-1RAs] to treat obesity and cardiometabolic disease. These medications are absolutely lifesaving and many of my patients in LA VIDA are benefiting from them. However, research from LA VIDA has shown that for many patients, their health and weight are influenced by factors that medications alone cannot address,” Dr. DeCan emphasized. “Stress, sleep, the food environment — including how to read a nutrition label, grocery shop and meal prep healthy, affordable meals — and access to green space or other locations for physical activity all need to be addressed for comprehensive obesity treatment.”
LA VIDA aims to address some of these factors which contribute to higher rates of obesity related chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, and cardiovascular disease. LA VIDA meets patients where they are both physically and mentally. The partnership with 3WINS provides tailored exercise to participants’ movement abilities. LA VIDA has also connected participants with food insecurity to food assistance programs such as CalFresh and health educators from the CalFresh Healthy Living program at California State University Northridge who give healthy recipe demonstrations at each session.
As part of the research study, preliminary data shows there has been statistically significant improvements in patients’ overall health. Body composition data shows nearly all patients have lost fat mass, which correlates with the improvement seen in blood sugars (HbA1C) and cholesterol. In addition to objective measures of cardiometabolic health, LA VIDA’s research arm also aims to study patients’ behaviors before and after the program. Because obesity is complex and nuanced, patients are also interviewed to further characterize their experience in the program and barriers to accessing healthcare in general.
“One thing that has come up often is that patients really appreciate the community aspect of group visits,” Dr. DeCan said. “They really enjoy seeing other patients on the same journey and overcoming similar challenges — it motivates them.”
LA VIDA has extended beyond OVMC patients. It has also created opportunities for DGSOM medical students to participate in the program and utilize the outcomes data to present at regional and national conferences. Brett Cervantes presented on the improvement in quality of life reported by patients by the end of the program at the American Academy of Family Medicine’s FUTURE leadership conference this past spring Osbaldo Carmago presented the cardiometabolic improvements seen in patients including a reduction in waist circumference (indicating reduced visceral adiposity), improvement in average blood sugar and cholesterol at the regional meeting of the Latino Medical Student Association The program has also created space for UCLA Internal Medicine Primary Care residents to gain exposure to comprehensive obesity treatment in the safety net. PGY-2 resident Katie Thure, MD, MPH has utilized elective time to be instrumental in both the clinic and data analysis.
Dr. DeCan presented the collaborative design and overall outcomes data at last year’s Health Equity Action Network annual meeting in San Francisco along with the improved dietary quality and increase in reported exercise data just a few weeks ago at the International Union of Nutrition Scientists International Congress of Nutrition conference in Paris. Manuscripts for submission to academic journals are in progress now that there are enough data to conduct more robust analyses.
“We wanted to get a large enough sample size to ensure we were drawing correct assumptions,” Dr. DeCan said. “Patients in the safety-net are underrepresented in studies on obesity, and we want to make sure we contribute sound data.”
LA VIDA plans to continue its clinical model after the pilot period ends in December, though it may be impacted by federal funding challenges. Dr. DeCan hopes that raising awareness of the program and publishing data from the pilot cohort will help secure long-term funding to keep it running and even grow.
“Through the pilot project we've learned that in addition to what we offer, we have a need for more mental health resources, which would require additional funding,” she said. “Creating a space to more comprehensively address barriers for patients has really been a privilege for me. It’s one of my big motivators to continue this work."
Thank you, Dr. DeCan and the La Vida team, for your incredible dedication to transforming health for all!
There is More...
The detailed summaries above are but examples of many other examples in leadership and innovations developed by our faculty that include our Program for Reducing Obesity in the UCLA Division of Endocrinology under the leadership of Na Shen, MD who published some their results a few years ago. This program has continued to grow and is improving the health of many UCLA Health patients throughout the region. We also have featured in the past the groundbreaking work of Kaitlyn M. Fruin, MD who spearheads the Veteran’s Garden at the Greater Los Angeles VA. There is an ongoing fundraiser to support their work.
I hope this leaves no doubt that when it comes to food, members of the DoM are world leaders in this area.
New T32 Grant Will Support Training in Metabolism and Metabolic Disease
We are thrilled to announce that the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has awarded funding to the Department of Medicine for a T32 training grant proposal entitled “Interdisciplinary Training Program in Metabolism” (UCLA-ITPM). This award supports MD, PhD and MD-PhD postdoctoral fellows studying metabolism and metabolic-related diseases including obesity, fatty liver, type 2 diabetes, diabetes complications, and cardiometabolic disorders.
The ITPM provides multidisciplinary training to prepare physician-scientists and PhD-trained investigators to become future leaders in academic medicine and biopharmaceutical research. Its mission is to build a strong pipeline of accomplished independent investigators dedicated to advancing NIDDK priorities by improving the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of metabolic diseases.
The training program is led by Andrea Hevener, PhD in the UCLA Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes; Tamer Sallam, MD, PhD in the UCLA Division of Cardiology; and Peter Tontonoz, MD, PhD in the UCLA Department of Pathology, in collaboration with 44 mentoring faculty from 12 departments and 6 clinical divisions across DGSOM and UCLA life sciences. The T32 currently supports 4 postdoctoral trainees and will expand to 6 trainees between 2026-2030.
Congratulations to Andrea, Tamer, Peter and the rest of their team on this exciting development! Here are the currently appointed fellows from the DoM:
Ross Steinberg, PhD
UCLA Division of Endocrinology
Mentor: Orian Shirihai, MD
"Mechanisms governing mitochondrial control over lipid droplet remodeling in cardiometabolic disease"
Xuchen Hu, MD, PhD (MSTP)
UCLA Division of Cardiology
Mentor: Mete Civelek, PhD
"Novel mechanisms controlling triglyceride and cholesterol metabolism in health and cardiometabolic disease"
Kidney Transplant Immunobiology Program (KTIP) Launched, with Reza Abdi, MD at Its Helm
We recently announced that the UCLA Division of Nephrology and DGSOM has established the Kidney Transplant Immunobiology Program (KTIP), a new initiative that will study innovations to improve long-term kidney transplant survival. The program will bridge bioengineering, immunology and regenerative medicine through collaborations across DGSOM and UCLA Health.
Leading the KTIP will be Reza Abdi, MD, who will join the DoM as director of transplant nephrology and kidney transplant immunobiology effective Nov. 1. He is currently a Professor at Harvard Medical School and director of the Transplant Research Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Abdi will expand our clinical programs, research prowess and education around kidney transplant.
Please join me in welcoming Reza to the UCLA family. Learn more about the KTIP and Dr. Abdi’s appointment here.
In Memory of Jonathan M. Tobis, MD
It is with a heavy heart that I share that Jonathan M. Tobis, MD, former director of interventional cardiology, passed away peacefully on Sept. 15 after a long illness. Many of you may remember Dr. Tobis as a mentor, colleague and friend. He was a force in the field of interventional cardiology, pioneering groundbreaking imaging techniques that ultimately made procedures like stent placement safe enough to become routine. On top of his work with individual cardiology patients, his contributions to his discipline have saved untold numbers of lives.
Read more about Dr. Tobis’ life here. Details about a memorial service and celebration of life will be shared in the coming weeks.
Dale
P.S.
In keeping with the theme of nutrition, let me share with you the picture of my birthday brunch earlier this year. I think that Vijaya and Zhaoping would be pleased!
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