On Tuesday, May 20, from 10:30 a.m. - Noon, APA CEO and Medical Director Marketa M. Wills, M.D., M.B.A., will host the CEO plenary, featuring the presentation of the inaugural Viswanathan Family Lifestyle Medicine and Psychiatry Award to Dean Ornish, M.D., and the accompanying award lecture by Dr. Ornish, and a conversation with Dr. Wills.

About Dean Ornish, M.D.

Dean Ornish, M.D., is the founder and president of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute and Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCSF and at UCSD.

Dr. Ornish was recognized as “one of the 125 most extraordinary University of Texas alumni in the past 125 years;” by TIME magazine as a “TIME 100 Innovator;” by LIFE magazine as “one of the fifty most influential members of his generation;” by People magazine as “one of the most interesting people of the year;” the University of California, Berkeley, “National Public Health Hero” award; and by Forbes magazine as “one of the world’s seven most powerful teachers.”

For over 47 years, he has directed clinical research demonstrating, for the first time, that comprehensive lifestyle changes may often begin to reverse coronary heart disease, prostate cancer, and other chronic diseases without drugs or surgery as well as “turning on” disease-preventing genes and “turning off” genes that promote cancer and heart disease, as well as the first controlled study showing that these lifestyle changes may begin to reverse cellular aging by lengthening telomeres, the ends of our chromosomes which regulate aging (in collaboration with Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, Nobel Laureate).

Medicare created a new benefit category, “intensive cardiac rehabilitation,” to provide coverage for this program, which is now being covered when offered virtually.

Dr. Ornish is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of UnDo It! (co authored with Anne Ornish) and six other books, all national bestsellers. His three main-stage TED.com talks have been viewed by over eight million people. He received his M.D. from the Baylor College of Medicine, was a clinical fellow in medicine at Harvard Medical School, and completed a residency in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital.