Health Circles
Community-engaged Lifestyle Medicine
We advance the principles of Lifestyle Medicine through the living fabric of community — connecting people to nourishing food, to one another, and to the healthcare relationships that sustain them, in partnership with local farmers, community organizations, and health professionals committed to shared flourishing.
What is a Health Circle?
Health Circles are physician and community co-facilitated gatherings that create intentional space for lifestyle medicine education, community-building, and human connection. They are not a class and not a clinic visit.
In a Health Circle, the curriculum follows the six pillars of Lifestyle Medicine — optimal nutrition, physical activity, stress management, restorative sleep, connectedness, and freedom from harmful substances. But the curriculum is always adapted to the people in the room: their questions, their goals, their challenges, their cultural practices and beliefs. Every circle is unique. Most circles include a Food is Medicine produce prescription program connecting the participants to nutrient-dense fresh food that only a local food system can offer.
A different kind of facilitation
Health Circle facilitators are trained in embodied leadership through the HEAL (Healthy Embodied Agile Leadership) pathway. This is not health education delivered from the front of a room. Facilitators practice deep listening, noticing opportunities to build and bolster motivation, and being present with difficulty and suffering. They offer guidance through their compassion along with their clinical expertise.
Connection is the priority.