Healthy habits

Promotion of healthy habits with hopes of preventing problems is the name of the game for a student interest group at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine. 

Founded in 2023, the Lifestyle Medicine Group generally aims to help OUWB students and the community develop healthy habits by focusing on nutritious eating, physical activity, and overall well-being. 

The group has hosted and participated in several culinary medicine cooking classes, holds a special monthlong challenge every year focused on plant-based foods,and recently published a paper. The group also helped OUWB earn a special certification from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. 

“We focus on healthy eating, exercise, good sleep, ways in which we can better our habits to prevent and tret disease, and not always referring back to medication, but ways that we can do that through healthy habits,” said Sophie Fisher, M3 who served as president for 2024-25. 

The hope is to prevent health problems before they arise through healthy habits, said Tai Metzger, M3, and vice president last year. 

“Our classes focus a lot on the medicines, the drugs, and the surgeries – how to treat patients when they have a problem. We’re really focused on preventing problems through a healthy diet, exercise, and good sleep,” he said. 

Plant Plunge and more 

The Lifestyle Medicine Group was formed following the merger of two other student organizations: Know Your Foods and Lifestyle Medicine Interest Group. 

Know Your Foods was focused on food and nutrition, offering cooking classes and volunteering at community gardens, while the Lifestyle Medicine Interest Group promoted healthy living beyond medications through exercise and mindfulness. 

Fanny Huang, M.D., OUWB ‘25, spearheaded the merger to create a more comprehensive organization. (She served as president of Know Your Foods for 2022-23.) 

One of the group’s main events is the Plant Plunge, a monthlong challenge encouraging participants to explore plant-based eating. Before the challenge begins, participants undergo health screening to measure weight, lipid levels, and blood pressure. 

“I studied nutrition in college, so I thought this was a good way to integrate healthy eating habits,” said Huang. “We focus on how to read nutrition labels. What do healthy meals look like? What are the ingredients that are going into food? We hope to educate medical school peers about that, and hopefully, that information translates into their patients to promote food as medicine.” 

Lily Quach, M.D., a former vice president, Know Your Foods, (left) takes a reading of M4 Manasa Pavuloori at the end of the Plant Plunge series in 2023.

During the Plant Plunge, attendees meet once a week during a four-week period, and a local nonprofit provides plant-based meals. Participants attend a one-hour lecture, focusing on nutritional health-related topics such as reading nutrition labels, making plant-based recipes, or reversing type II diabetes. 

“We invite students to not only just eat the plant meals that are provided once a week but to change their eating habits a little bit over the course of the month and take the plunge. We can gauge how people's cholesterol, sugar levels, blood pressure, and weight have changed over the course of the month,” said Fisher. 

At the end of the plunge, attendees will have a final health screening to measure how their body has changed during the four-week period. 

“We had some significant changes with people's lipid levels last year that we observed over the course of the Plant Plunge. People talked about their energy levels improving,” said Fisher. 

During the inaugural Plant Plunge of 2023, students conducted research on attendees' health, eating habits, and exercise. The research showed the effect of the Plant Plunge program and how it affected attendees’ health. The research was presented at the Lifestyle National Conference in October of that year and published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. 

In addition to the Plant Plunge, the organization also hosts cooking classes in Troy Beaumont’s demonstration kitchens. Students prepare healthy meals together and learn practical recipes they can use despite their busy schedules. 

“We split into groups, and each cooked a different recipe, and then we all ate it together,” said Metzger. “As students, it's hard to find time to cook healthy meals, but it was nice to learn some easy recipes.” 

The Lifestyle Group also engages in community service, volunteering at local gardens like Micah 6 in Pontiac and conducting health screenings at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Health Fair at Chandler Park and the Gary Burnstein Community Health Clinic in Pontiac. 

Beyond promoting healthy habits, the organization serves as a way for students to connect and gain valuable mentoring and friendships. 

“A lot of our events are community-based. For example, at a cooking class, it was nice because we got to meet a lot of the first-year students who we hadn't necessarily talked to before,” said Fisher. “Food and eating together is a big part of a community, and when we can all share a meal, that's a big thing. It's been really wonderful to do that.” 

Curriculum certification 

In addition to benefiting participants in its programs, the student organization has helped OUWB land a Bronze Tier Undergraduate Medical Education Curriculum Certification from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine for Integration of Lifestyle Medicine. 

The award acknowledges OUWB’s commitment to integrating lifestyle medicine into its curriculum – covering more than 90% of core competencies in the field through both required and elective coursework. 

As a result, OUWB is now listed in ACLM Medical School Directory — a distinction that underscores national leadership in lifestyle-focused medical education. 

Deena Sukhon, M4 and a member of the Lifestyle Medicine Group, encouraged faculty to apply for the certification. 

“As soon as I saw that it was an open application, I knew our school would be such a perfect fit,” said Sukhon. “We already knew so much in terms of lifestyle medicine and officially turning it into part of the curriculum just made sense.” 

Sukhon began the application process but quickly realized she needed faculty support, so she reached out to Virginia Uhley, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Foundational Medical Studies, who finalized the submission. 

“We had to show that we had invested enough time into our curriculum surrounding lifestyle medicine education,” said Sukhon. 

Lifestyle medicine content like nutrition and patient-centered counseling is embedded throughout OUWB curriculum. 

“In every organ system, we have a nutrition lecture, and that's unique of our school compared to other schools,” said Sukhon. “They're learning everything about that organ system, and they learn the nutrition that applies to that applies to that organ system, instead of just learning everything at once. It really helps you put the picture together.” 

Uhley said the bronze certification affirms OUWB’s efforts and opens up the doors for future curriculum development, including new electives. 

“That process was identifying what is in our curriculum, mapping it to what the concepts and objectives were. Then the American College of lifestyle medicine provided us with a certification,” said Uhley. 

Uhley added that the student group has gone even further through submitting research, presenting posters ,and publishing work that expands on course material. 

“It's representative of joining a group that is highly valued across the country and identifies us as a school that believes that lifestyle medicine is important,” said Uhley. “Many students are very interested in this area of medicine, so it also helps not just for current students but for students that we hope will apply at admission to our school, because we can identify that we have lifestyle medicine concepts integrated into our curriculum.”