"COACH Approach to Wellness" with Elizabeth Frates, MD

Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) Pegg Frates, is a physician and certified health and wellness coach. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, as a double major in psychology and biology. Then, she attended Stanford University Medical School where she chose the specialty of Physiatry. Dr. Frates came back to Boston for her internship in internal medicine at MGH and residency at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in the Harvard Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. There, she served as chief resident and President of the National Resident Physician Committee for the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. During her residency, she performed research on patient and caregiver knowledge and expectations for functional recovery after stroke and published those results in the American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Finding there was a lack of understanding of stroke basics in both patients and caregivers post stroke, she co-authored a book to help fill this gap. The book is titled "Life After Stroke: The Guide to Recovering Your Health and Preventing Another Stroke" (2006) Johns Hopkins University Press. Dr. Frates has trained in many different programs addressing behavior change in order to learn how to empower people to adopt healthy habits, those that prevent stroke and other lifestyle related diseases. This training includes a certification in Motivational Interviewing from UMass, certification in health and wellness coaching, Mind Body Medicine training with Dr. Herb Benson’s group, and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction training with Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s group. She has been actively involved with teaching evidence based wellness, healthy habits, stroke prevention as well as lifestyle medicine at the Harvard Medical School, Continuing Medical Education Conferences both nationally and internationally for years. Dr. Frates founded her own wellness coaching company, Wellness Synergy in order to empower individuals and groups to attain their optimal level of wellness. She has developed 12 Steps to Wellness, which has helped people move from sitting on the couch eating potato chips to walking, tracking their steps with pedometers and enjoying fruits and vegetables. She is currently the Director of Wellness Programming at the Spaulding Stroke Research and Recovery Institute at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, a Harvard Medical School affiliate. Dr. Frates is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Frates has worked in the area of lifestyle medicine for almost ten years. She is the Director of Medical Student Education at the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine, the faculty advisor for the Lifestyle Medicine Interest Group at Harvard Medical School and has directed wellness programs at Harvard College. In the fall of 2014, Dr. Frates created a college level course in lifestyle medicine from scratch. Using all her experience in medicine and coaching along with the latest evidence from the medical literature, Dr. Frates crafted the curriculum, wrote weekly case studies, quizzes, and discussion questions and lectured in two hour classes for 14 weeks in the course Psych E 1037 Introduction to Lifestyle Medicine at Harvard Extension School. Teaching is a passion for Dr. Frates. Dr. Frates talks about shifting the perspective from "expert" approach to what she calls "COACH approach" to wellness and healing - an approach rooted in compassion, openness, appreciation, curiosity and honesty. To learn more please visit: Website: http://wellness-synergy.com Twitter: @BethFratesMD Course Website: https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/courses/introduction-lifestyle-medicine/14505