In our third edition of the Expert Series, RAC member, Dr Shireen Kassam, discusses her personal and professional vegan journey and her work with Plant Based Health Professionals UK.
My main profession is a Consultant Haematologist at King’s College Hospital London where I look after patients with lymphoma. I also work in the diagnostics laboratory where I interpret blood and bone marrow results to ensure timely and accurate and diagnoses of haematological cancers. During my career I have and continue to conduct both clinical and laboratory research in the field of lymphoma with relevant publications.
In recent years I have found a new passion as an advocate for healthy plant-based nutrition. I am an ethical vegan, and it was only after I took the decision 5.5 years ago to become vegan that I came across the vast scientific literature supporting a whole food plant-based diet for optimal health and well-being (Bodai, 2017). I was unaware that globally, dietary factors are the top cause of death and disability, resulting in more deaths than alcohol consumption, tobacco smoking and drugs combined (Murray et al., 2018; Steel et al., 2018). Diet-related diseases differ around the world but in high income countries, such as the UK, the issues stem from the overconsumption of animal-derived and processed foods and inadequate consumption of whole plant foods (fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds). This overconsumption of nutritionally inadequate foods has led to an epidemic of chronic disease, including obesity. Four healthy lifestyle factors; not smoking tobacco, minimal alcohol consumption, regular physical activity and healthy diets, could prevent and reverse up to 80% of the top causes of death and disability in the UK (D. L. Katz et al., 2018; Kvaavik, Batty, Ursin, Huxley, & Gale, 2010).
With this new found knowledge, Plant-based health professionals UK (PBHP UK) was conceived. I was initially motivated by a chance meeting at London Vegfest 2017 with Dr Tom Hubbard, a GP based in Ireland. We shared a passion for promoting plant-based nutrition but were yet to find a way to share this message with the wider medical community. So, we decided there and then to organise the first medical conference in the UK to focus on plant-based nutrition.
So, 2018 started off with planning and organising the conference. It led us to meet a number of inspiring health professionals already promoting plant-based nutrition in their own areas of practice. Without much effort at all, a whole programme of speakers was put together. Initial worries about tickets sales soon disappeared when, through Facebook advertising alone, the conference sold out 5 weeks before the date resulting in a long waiting list. The conference took place on March 23rd 2018 at King’s College Hospital, London and was a great success. It was accredited for continuing professional development hours by the Royal College of Physicians and brought together health professionals and members of the public who share the vision of harnessing the power of plant-based nutrition to prevent and reverse chronic disease. For many the conference validated their own diet choice. For others it gave them the confidence to go back into clinical practice and share this knowledge with patients and clients knowing there was genuine support in the UK. You can read more about the conference here.
Whilst planning for the London conference the founder of Go Vegan Scotland, Barbara Bolton, reached out to us and asked if we would bring a similar conference to Glasgow. She was involved in organising the annual conference of the International Vegan Rights Alliance, so we agreed to have a simultaneous conference to facilitate networking and knowledge sharing. Our second conference was fixed before we had even held our first. It took place at Glasgow Royal Infirmary on June 30th 2018 and again was a sold out event.
We have also been fortunate enough to host further events in 2018 with internationally renowned advocates of plant-based diets. This includes; Dr Kim Williams, past President of the American College of Cardiologists; Dr Dagfinn Aune, from Imperial College London, who has authored some of the seminal papers demonstrating without a doubt that a diet centred around whole plant-foods is associated with optimal health and longevity; Dr Joel Fuhrman, pioneer of lifestyle medicine who developed the Nutritarian diet, a diet centred around whole plant foods, low in calories yet high in micronutrients. He has helped thousands of people reverse chronic disease and regain their health.
With the launch events over and confidence that there was a need and demand for education in the field of plant-based nutrition, I have set up PBHP UK as a non-profit organsiation whose mission is to provide evidence-based education in the field of plant-based nutrition and other lifestyle interventions for the prevention and treatment of chronic disease. Nutrition education for Doctors in particular has been inadequate and most doctors are not able to adequately counsel patients on healthy diet and lifestyle choices (D. Katz, 2018). My first job was to put a team together. I didn’t have to seek anyone out as such. Our paths crossed for different reasons and the team grew organically. There are now 12 advisory board members of PBHP UK, all dedicating time and expertise for free. We have a shared mission to educate health professionals and the general public on healthy plant-based nutrition and facilitate its use within clinical practice. It is a multi-professional group with doctor, nursing, dietician and patient representation. You can find out more about the team here. We are also grateful to our two international advisory board members Dr Kim Williams and Dr David Jenkins. They are both pioneers in the field of plant-based nutrition and their expertise is invaluable. Dr Kim Williams was the first vegan President of the American College of Cardiologists. Dr David Jenkins invented the glycaemic index and the portfolio diet.
My initial aim was to forge relationships with organisations that share our mission. I wanted to gain credibility for PBHP UK but also believe that we cannot work in silos. We need to collaborate and share knowledge and expertise. This will help to spread the plant-based message more widely and quickly.
To this end, we have been recognised as an aligned member organisation of the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine, who are part of the lifestyle medicine global alliance founded by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. The lifestyle medicine movement is now growing, as health professionals recognise the impact of lifestyle on health and disease and its role in disease prevention. Nutrition is just one part of lifestyle medicine, which also includes physical exercise, stress management, sleep, avoid of toxic substances including tobacco and alcohol and loving relationships . However, we believe that nutrition is the most important part of lifestyle medicine creating the foundation for true health.
We are delighted to have achieved international recognition by being accepted as a member organisation of the True Health Initiative (THI). Founded by Dr David Katz, an internationally renowned nutrition scientist and preventative medicine physician, the THI is ‘a global movement to make the fundamental truths about healthy, sustainable living and eating common knowledge’. It promotes the core principles of lifestyle medicine in order to ‘add years to life and life to years’(D. L. Katz et al., 2018). Our Australian plant-based health professional counterparts have founded a Charity called Doctors for Nutrition. We are delighted to be collaborating with them and I am one of their international advisory board members.
To gain recognition for providing high quality education, I wanted PBHP UK to work with a University. By pure chance and good fortune, I was put in touch with the Vice Chancellor of Winchester University, Professor Joy Carter. She is vegan and promotes core values at Winchester University that I can align with; ‘Compassion, Individuals Matter and Spirituality’. I met with her and a number of her fellow vegan staff members, and suggested that Winchester University consider offering a course on plant-based nutrition. Within a few weeks I had received a formal letter of appointment to the University and am now working one day a week on developing such a course, which, with the help of my plant-based friends and colleagues will hopefully go live in 2019.
Another partnership that has been forged is with Proveg International. In collaboration with Charité Medical University, the Immanuel Hospital Group, Stiftung Reformhaus-Fachakademie and the German Vegetarian Union (ProVeg Deutschland e.V.), Proveg has been holding the VegMed medical conference on plant-based nutrition in Berlin since 2012. Together, we are bringing the VegMed conference to London on 12th and 13th October 2019. This will be the first international plant-based nutrition conference to be held in the UK. Confirmed international speakers include Dr Neal Barnard, Founder and President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Dr Michael Klaper, a renowned plant-based Doctor and educator, Dr Michael Greger, founder of nutritionfacts.org and also a member of the vegan society research advisory committee, and Brenda Davis, a plant-based registered dietician, who has authored a number of books on the subject. Members of the PBHP UK team will also be speaking giving the conference a UK focus. More information and tickets can be found here.
Another partnership has been to team up with Vegfest UK to bring high quality, evidence-based talks on plant-based nutrition to the immensely successful Vegfest events. PBHP UK are delighted to be organising the health section of Brighton Vegfest on March 23rd/24th and London Vegfest on October 26th/27th. We will cover all aspects of plant-based nutrition from the basics on how to ensure a plant-based diet is nutritionally complete through to its role in preventing and reversing various chronic diseases. These events attract vegans and non-vegans alike and will give us the opportunity to provide education in an accessible and friendly environment.
So how is 2019 shapi
ng up for PBHP UK? It has been a great start with international publications supporting a shift towards more plant-based diets globally not only for human health, but for planetary health (Springmann et al., 2018). Food production, including animal agriculture is the largest cause of environmental change. Animal agriculture produces more greenhouse gas emissions that all forms of transportation put together (Bailey, Froggatt, & Wellesley, 2014). It is also a major contributor to water pollution, land degradation, loss of biodiversity and species extinction. We are heading towards climate catastrophe and a shift towards plant-based diet is required to mitigate some of these issues (Masson-Delmotte et al., 2018). The Eat-Lancet commission published their first report on January 17th. This commission brings together 37 scientists and experts in nutrition, health, political science and the environment from 16 countries. They have published an evidence-based report on the definition of an optimal diet for human and planetary health. The reference diet is composed of predominately whole plant-based with <15% of daily calories recommended from animal-derived foods and recognition that animal foods are not required for a healthy, nutritionally complete diet. Not only is this reference diet predicted to help prevent climate catastrophe, it is predicted to prevent more than 11 millions deaths globally a year (Willett et al., 2019). In addition, Health Canada has just published it’s dietary guidelines, which strongly recommends replacing animal-derived foods with plant foods and no longer has dairy or meat as required or essential food groups (Health Canada, 2019).
PBHP UK has launched membership. This will bring together a community of health professionals and interested members of the general public in the promotion of plant-based nutrition. There is definitely strength in numbers. Members will be able to get involved with our work, receive up to date plant-based nutrition scientific and clinical information, reduced price tickets to some events, access to PBHP UK resources and expertise and our support.
Up coming events:
1) March 23rd/24th Brighton Vegfest. PBHP UK hosting the health talks. Get your tickets here.
2) April 13th 2019, Warrington, is our next medical conference. More information and tickets here.
3) June 1st 2019, Canadian Plant-Based Nutrition Conference, Toronto, Canada. This is in collaboration with my sister, Dr Zahra Kassam, a Radiation Oncologist in Toronto. It will bring together Canadian plant-based health professionals and the Canadian Academy of Lifestyle Medicine.
4) June 30th 2019, London. Hosting Dr Kim Williams. More details to follow soon.
5) October 12/13th 2019. VegMed, London. More information and tickets here.
In the meantime, I continue to working on developing the first University-based course on plant-based nutrition at Winchester University with a planned launch for 2019/2020 academic year.
References
Bailey, R., Froggatt, A., & Wellesley, L. (2014). Livestock – Climate Change’s Forgotten Sector Global Public Opinion on Meat and Dairy Consumption. Energy, Environment, and Resources - Chatham House.
Bodai, B. (2017). Lifestyle Medicine: A Brief Review of Its Dramatic Impact on Health and Survival. The Permanente Journal.
Health Canada. (2019). Canada’s Dietary Guidelines.
Katz, D. (2018). How to Improve Clinical Practice and Medical Education About Nutrition. AMA J Ethics, 20(10), E994-1000.
Katz, D. L., Frates, E. P., Bonnet, J. P., Gupta, S. K., Vartiainen, E., & Carmona, R. H. (2018). Lifestyle as Medicine: The Case for a True Health Initiative. American Journal of Health Promotion.
Kvaavik, E., Batty, G. D., Ursin, G., Huxley, R., & Gale, C. R. (2010). Influence of individual and combined health behaviors on total and cause-specific mortality in men and women: The United Kingdom Health and Lifestyle Survey. Archives of Internal Medicine.
Masson-Delmotte, V., Zhai, P., Pörtner, H.-O., Roberts, D., Skea, J., Shukla, P. R., … Waterfield, T. (2018). IPCC Special Report 1.5 - Summary for Policymakers. IPCC.
Murray, C. J. L., Mokdad, A. H., Ballestros, K., Echko, M., Glenn, S., Olsen, H. E., … Murray, C. J. L. (2018). The state of US health, 1990-2016: Burden of diseases, injuries, and risk factors among US states. JAMA - Journal of the American Medical Association.
Springmann, M., Wiebe, K., Mason-D’Croz, D., Sulser, T. B., Rayner, M., & Scarborough, P. (2018). Health and nutritional aspects of sustainable diet strategies and their association with environmental impacts: a global modelling analysis with country-level detail. The Lancet Planetary Health.
Steel, N., Ford, J. A., Newton, J. N., Davis, A. C. J., Vos, T., Naghavi, M., … Murray, C. J. L. (2018). Changes in health in the countries of the UK and 150 English Local Authority areas 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. The Lancet.
Willett, W., Rockström, J., Loken, B., Springmann, M., Lang, T., Vermeulen, S., … Murray, C. (2019). Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. Lancet, 6736, 3–49.
The views expressed by our Research News contributors are not necessarily the views of The Vegan Society.
The views expressed by our Research News contributors are not necessarily the views of The Vegan Society.
