Culinary medicine is an educational and nutritional approach to improving eating behaviors and overall health by focusing on food shopping, storage, and meal preparation skills. At the Osher Center for Integrative Health, our interdisciplinary team utilizes food as medicine to teach students and patients the importance of food and its impact on your health.
Teaching Kitchen Events at Turner Farm and the Cr(EAT)e Culinary Studio at the Cincinnati Museum Center
Experiential learning opportunities focused on food as medicine for patients, students, and the community to learn from our physicians and cook a healthy meal!
Turner Farm Teaching Kitchen events occur in Indian Hill, Ohio. Past events have included Optimizing Your Brain Health through Farm Fresh Foods (Mladen Golubic, MD, PhD), Cooking for Cancer Prevention & Recurrence (Mladen Golubic, MD, PhD), and Preventing Cancer through Healthy Choices: A Scientific Approach (Rekha Chaudhary, MD).
Develop a Personalized Nutrition Plan with a Lifestyle Medicine Consultation
Our goal is to work with you to create a personalized self-care plan that you can implement and sustain with your lifestyle.
At your lifestyle medicine consultation, you will initially meet with your physician or nurse practitioner for one hour. They will learn about your personal, medical and family history; your dietary, exercise and sleep habits; your sources of stress and coping mechanisms, and then will assess your health concerns and evaluate your symptoms, order any necessary tests and create mutually agreed upon lifestyle prescriptions.
Centering Group Medical Visits Provide Nutrition Education & Teaching Kitchen Experience
Centering group medical visits take a group approach to healthcare. Small groups of patients meet once a month in addition to one-on-one assessments with their provider. Centering allows patients to become more informed and confident in making healthy choices, all while building a community and support system. UC Health currently offers group visits for patients with pre-diabetes, diabetes, chronic pain and obesity.
Teaching kitchen events at LaSoupe are also scheduled once-a-month outside of the regularly scheduled group medical visit for participants to learn how to cook healthy meals.
Director, Osher Center for Integrative Health | Professor, Department of Family & Community Medicine, UC College of Medicine
Dr. Cotton is a licensed clinical psychologist and founding director of the UC Center for Integrative Health and Wellness and UC Health Integrative Medicine. A Professor in the Departments of Family and Community Medicine and Pediatrics, Dr. Cotton has an active research lab with ongoing clinical studies focusing primarily on mindfulness-based interventions and integrative medicine practice-based research. In 2007, Dr. Cotton was awarded a K23 career development award by the National Institutes of Health to examine the role of spiritual coping and health-related quality of life in adolescents with a chronic illness. A former Board member for the Academic Consortium of Integrative Medicine and Health, she is often invited to speak with community organizations and businesses, healthcare audiences, and academics about mind-body medicine for stress reduction, and preventive and wellness-based approaches to healthcare.
Mladen Golubic, MD, PhD, has worked in the fields of immunogenetics and molecular and cancer biology, contributing to the understanding of interactions between the environment and our genes. His clinical work focuses now on lifestyle-related chronic diseases.
As an internist, Dr. Golubic has practiced and directed educational and research activities within integrative and lifestyle medicine since 2009 with a group of exceptional lifestyle medicine professionals (dietitians, chefs, yoga instructors, exercise physiologists, meditation teachers, etc.) within the Wellness Institute at the Cleveland Clinic.
Outside of the health system, he enjoys time with his family and spending time outdoors.
Susie is a Principal Research Assistant in the Family & Community Medicine and Integrative Medicine Research Divisions in the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. She received her BS in Neuroscience and BA in Psychology from the University of Cincinnati in 2011, and her MA in Psychology from Pepperdine University in 2013. She has been working in the College of Medicine since 2013 on projects covering alcohol dependence, anxiety, group medical visits, chronic pain, integrative medicine, mind-body medicine, telehealth, and medical educational programming. Susie has successfully managed research and educational programs in the DFCM and Integrative Medicine, including data collection and management, IRB maintenance, and outcomes dissemination.
Dr. Chef Stephanie Michalak White has worked in the hospitality industry for over a decade. She has worked in many environments, including small restaurants, pop-ups, catering, high volume, and farm-to-table establishments. She holds a bachelor of professional studies in culinary arts management from the Culinary Institute of America, a master of arts in food studies from New York University, and a doctorate in Higher Education Leadership from Maryville University.
Previously, Chef Stephanie designed curriculum, taught, and catered for a teaching kitchen on an organic farm in Cincinnati, Ohio, centered around using local, seasonal ingredients. She also held a position on the Chef Advisory Committee for the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative. During her doctoral studies, her research focused on food insecurity in higher education. Now, Stephanie helps oversee two online academic programs for the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts: Plant-Based Culinary Arts and Holistic Nutrition & Wellness as well as working with the Osher Center for Integrative Health at UC teaching food as medicine principles. When she is not working or researching, Stephanie is an avid painter and enjoys traveling and hiking with her husband, Nick, and three rescue dogs, Jack, Mac, and Ned.
Integrative Medicine Provider
Pamela Sharpe, FNP-BC, specializes in integrative and lifestyle medicine. She believes every person can obtain notable benefits with the implementation of Lifestyle Medicine which utilizes a whole food plant-based eating pattern, physical activity, sleep for restoration, management of stress, positive social connections, and avoidance of toxic substances as an evidence-based therapeutic modality.
Food as Medicine
Her journey started with food, trained as a chef. She wanted to create higher-quality nutritional meals for her family and friends, some of whom were affected adversely by chronic health and lifestyle-related conditions. Seeking to gain an even greater understanding, she went on to receive her Bachelor’s in in Food and Nutrition with Pre-Med and Chemistry. This helped to provide a greater understanding of advanced nutrition, biochemistry, and human metabolism as related to wellness, diseases, and chronic conditions. Armed with this knowledge, she went on to gain graduate-level training and experience as an ANCC Board-Certified Family Nurse Practitioner.
Combining Allopathic and Osteopathic Medicine
In clinical practice, she has found patients utilizing allopathic and osteopathic medicine, in combination with the use of evidence-based lifestyle medicine and integrative therapies, help patients to address or improve areas of life-related to stress, sleep, nutrition, and movement. Additionally, if applicable working with patients to eliminate intake of any health-harming substances which can lead to greater overall areas of better-quality health and wellbeing.
Good Catch Award Recipient
Most recently, Pamela was awarded the Good Catch Award. A recognition related to a patient who came in for a routine acute visit. On further examination, she discovered the patient needed immediate life-saving treatment. Pamela worked with an interdisciplinary team to help provide resources and care while getting the patient transported to obtain life-sustaining medical care and treatment. The patient survived and a major chronic condition was discovered, appropriate treatment was started, and the patient was able to thrive without many alterations in their quality of life.
Leading Health Improvement with Lifestyle Change
Pamela is passionate about healthcare and having the opportunity to work with patients to improve their lifestyle and health. Her philosophy is that it is never too late to change and even the smallest changes can lead to lasting results. With intensive lifestyle changes, one can see significant changes in the optimization of many acute and chronic conditions. Some conditions may not be able to be reversed but implementing lifestyle and integrative medicine can help decrease pain, stress, improve sleep and mood, as well as helping patients live their lives to the fullest.
Outside of work, Pamela enjoys taking long walks in nature with family, friends, and her dog. She loves bike riding, as well as creating and cooking mostly whole-food plant-based recipes.
Expertise:
Integrative Medicine
Locations:
UC Gardner Neuroscience Institute
Integrative Medicine
3113 Bellevue Avenue, Suite 3100
Cincinnati, OH 45219