Padmaja Patel, MD, FACLM DipABLM, has been a practicing internist in Midland, TX, for nearly two decades. She is the Lifestyle Medicine (LM) Medical Director for Wellvana Health, a national value-based organization. She has served as the Medical Director of the Lifestyle Medicine Center at Midland Health and has advocated for offering various comprehensive lifestyle intervention programs under physician supervision.
Dr. Patel is the President-Elect of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) and Vice President of the World Lifestyle Medicine Organization. She also serves as Vice President of Midland Quality Alliance, a clinically integrated network of physicians in Midland, TX. She is a member of the National Quality Forum’s 2021-2023 Leadership Consortium and a founding member of the advisory board of the ACLM’s Health Systems Council. She has served as the Chair of the Patient Care Subcommittee of ACLM’s Health Systems Council and ACLM’s Clinical Practice and Quality Committee.

Dr. Patel has delivered many innovative Lifestyle Medicine (LM) care delivery models, including a physician office-based intensive cardiac rehabilitation program. She served as the medical director for the Ornish Program for Reversing Heart Disease at Midland Health, the first Intensive Therapeutic Lifestyle Change (ITLC) Program in the US, which demonstrated disease reversal and cost savings from a reduction in cardiac revascularization procedures, inpatient hospitalization, and ER utilization. She has developed successful lifestyle medicine based ITLC programs for chronic disease remission and has delivered these in person and through virtual settings. She has passionately advocated for LM integration within health systems across the patient care continuum and in employee and population health. In her current part-time role with Wellvana, she has designed LM care delivery models to integrate LM within ACOs and Medicare Advantage plans to replicate her success in the FFS models and achieve the quintuple aim of healthcare.

Dr. Patel has been awarded the prestigious status of Fellow of ACLM for her outstanding achievement in the field of Lifestyle Medicine. She is also a Certified Lifestyle Medicine Intensivist, a recognition given to those who have successfully used LM as a therapeutic modality to prevent, treat and reverse chronic diseases in individuals, populations, and communities. She co-founded Healthy City, a non-profit organization, to raise awareness of the benefits of plant-based nutrition within her community.