Director of lifestyle medicine programs at the USC School of Medicine Greenville and nationally recognized expert, Dr. Jennifer Trilk, PhD, served as a panelist at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Food is Medicine Summit during a session titled, “Investing in Education Across the Health Continuum.”

During the conference hosted by Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and attended by 470 in-person guests and 2,170 livestream participants, Dr. Trilk shared observations from her 12 years at Greenville’s medical school, which aims to improve the health of local communities in Greenville using lifestyle medicine concepts.  

“It’s so rewarding to see the lifestyle medicine work that we have led in Greenville earn national attention,” Trilk said. “We are grateful for the national platform to help amplify ways that lifestyle medicine at the heart of patient care can make a difference. We’ve seen firsthand how movement, better eating and a wholistic patient approach can transform longevity and the prevalence of chronic health issues.”

To hear Dr. Trilk’s discussion, view the livestream recording on HHS’ YouTube channel. 
In 2016, Dr. Trilk founded Exercise is Medicine Greenville, a 12-week, lifestyle medicine-based program to improve the lives of adults with chronic conditions, receiving the Global Leadership Award from the American College of Sports Medicine in recognition of her work.  

Six years later, Dr. Trilk was invited to lead a Lifestyle Medicine summer course at Tel Aviv University School of Medicine in Israel, where she shared the School of Medicine Greenville’s impact with the world. Since then, Dr. Trilk has participated in numerous conferences in Washington, D.C., including the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, and received the special recognition award from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine the same year.  

Dr. Trilk spearheaded the Lifestyle Medicine curriculum alongside the USC School of Medicine Greenville, advising key lifestyle changes to nutrition, physical activity, sleep, social connectivity, self-care, and behavior as essential elements of maintaining one’s health. Offering all students a unique 100+ hour formalized Lifestyle Medicine training, as well as 80 hours of culinary medicine elective training before graduation, Greenville proves that it is a different kind of medical school by training doctors to see patients holistically while treating morbidity and mortality related to chronic illness.  

Trilk’s contributions and epistemic community relationships have been critical in empowering the medical school’s vision to transform community health outcomes by training One Doctor at a Time.