Event: Plant-based for the Planet Webinar 
Date: Tuesday, March 25
Time: 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM 
Registration: FREE

Presenters: Ulka Agarwal, M.D. and Tamiko Katsumoto, M.D.

Plant-based diets are the key to preventing, treating and even reversing chronic illnesses like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. But did you know that plant-based diets are also the key to planetary health? Agriculture is the primary source of anthropogenic methane emissions - mostly due to livestock - and is the primary cause of global deforestation, habitat destruction, and biodiversity loss. Shifting to a plant-based diet is a high impact action for reducing carbon footprint - more so than eating local, eating organic, composting, recycling, and even reducing food waste. In fact, even if we decarbonize everything else, we still cannot meet the Paris Agreement unless we eat less meat. So what can we as healthcare providers do about this? 


Health care providers (HCP) are some of the most highly trusted individuals to communicate about both climate change and nutrition with patients. A recent Food Insights survey found that 78% of consumers changed their eating habits as a result of a conversation with their HCP. However, the majority of physicians receive fewer than 20 hours of nutrition education during their entire medical education. In this webinar, we will share techniques and best practices for effectively communicating with patients about the intersection of our environment, our food, and our health, and about how food can be medicine for many different conditions. We will address frequently asked questions by patients, provide high yield resources that can be shared during the clinical encounter, and communicate findings from our recent Stanford Healthcare nutrition education study the “PLANT” Study (“Providers Learning About Nutrition Together”).

Join us for this compelling webinar and learn how you and your patients can be part of the solution for a healthier more sustainable world, by shifting to a plant-based diet.



Speaker Bios

Ulka Agarwal, M.D. is a psychiatrist at California State University, East Bay, where she has led plant-based nutrition education programs for students, staff, and faculty. She earned her medical degree from The Chicago Medical School, completed her psychiatry residency at the University of Washington, and is a graduate of Dr. Andrew Weil’s Integrative Medicine Fellowship. She has conducted clinical trials examining the effects of plant-based diets on mental and physical health, and enjoys educating patients and colleagues on the benefits of plant-based diets for human and planetary health. 


Tamiko Katsumoto, M.D. is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University. She earned her MD from the University of California, San Francisco. She completed her internal medicine residency and rheumatology fellowship at UCSF. Deeply committed to human and planetary health, she is passionate about educating her patients and colleagues on the merits of sustainable plant-rich diets as a strategy to both improve individual health and mitigate climate change and environmental degradation. She is fascinated by the impact of diet on inflammation and autoimmunity. She is involved in several clinical trials at Stanford and has spent time at Genentech, where she led several global clinical trials in immunology. 

For registration assistance or questions, please contact Emily at emily@sccma.org