Weill Cornell Medicine – Qatar (WCM-Q) held its first Lifestyle Medicine Week to reinforce the message of leading healthy lives among staff, faculty and students of Education City.

The week-long event was organised by the Institute for Population Health, and featured workshops and demonstrations designed to improve the community’s health and remind them of the need to make good lifestyle choices.

Lifestyle Medicine Week
Executive Chef Jens Heier prepares healthy and tasty dishes in front of an audience in Education City. 

The event began with the Walk for Life in Qatar Foundation’s Oxygen Park, participated by staff, faculty and students as well as friends and families. It was followed with a cooking demonstration by Jens Heier, Executive Chef at the Millennium Hotel Doha, who made Vietnamese chicken salad and sea bass with cucumber and dill, among other dishes, before an appreciative audience. The recipes were quick, healthy and most importantly, tasted great.

The healthy living week also featured ‘Get Connected’, a seminar on building and maintaining good relationships, presented by Sobia Rahman, psychologist and learning support specialist at WCM-Q; and ‘Quiet your busy mind and body’ presented by Jacki Woodworth, learning facilitator and mindfulness teacher at Qatar Development and Consultancy Centre, who provided attendees with ideas on how to build healthy habits that promote health and wellness.

The final day of the week saw the Tobacco Control Centre under Hamad Medical Corporation visit WCM-Q and deliver a smoking cessation campaign – messages and techniques to stop smoking – for people who smoke cigarettes and shisha.

Dr Sohaila Cheema, Director of the Institute for Population Health, said it had been a fascinating week.

I’d like to thank everyone who attended the various activities hosted during the week. I think everyone has picked up tips and ideas for improving their health and wellness in small but significant ways and we will look at hosting the week again next year.’

Dr Ravinder Mamtani, Professor of Healthcare Policy, and Research and Senior Associate Dean for Population Health, said the aim of Lifestyle Medicine Week was to make people consciously think of their health and consider ways in which it could be improved. Non-communicable diseases are the biggest causes of premature deaths in the world today, according to Dr Mamtani and he said that these chronic diseases, can – for the most part – be prevented and in some cases even reversed by eating healthy, taking regular exercise and curtailing known health risks like smoking.

While all employees in Education City work in institutions for higher education, we all, at some point fall into bad habits. This week was a reminder for everyone to improve our health.’

The Lifestyle Medicine Week followed the inaugural meeting of the recently established Lifestyle Medicine Interest Group – Middle East (LMIG-ME), which was convened at WCM-Q in late September. The meeting attracted a large number of participants from the healthcare sector, with some delegates joining virtually through an online video-link.

The meeting featured a discussion of the aims and strategies of LMIG-ME, followed by an interactive Q&A session. The Institute for Population Health is planning to host its first Lifestyle Medicine Symposium in February next year.

Check out this link for more information about the Lifestyle Medicine Week at WCM-Q.