HSS Lifestyle Medicine Program

Program Services

Our interprofessional healthcare team provides evidence-based methods to help you achieve your healthy lifestyle goals. Your personal coordinated plan may include virtual and in person visits for the following:

Meet Our Team

Our healthcare team is comprised of lifestyle medicine certified–physicians with specialty in obesity medicine, physical medicine and rehabilitation, physical therapists, an exercise kinesiologist, dietitian, health coach and smoking cessation specialist. 

Heidi Prather, DO is a board certified physician in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Sports Medicine and a Diplomat of the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine. She serves as the founder and Medical Director of the HSS Lifestyle Medicine Program. She has practiced non-operative musculoskeletal medicine for nearly 3 decades and enjoys clinical work, teaching, and research. Frustrated with the healthcare system’s limitations in healthcare provider collaboration and patient access to services needed to improve their musculoskeletal health, she developed the HSS Lifestyle Medicine program to enable a focus on whole-person health. Practicing lifestyle medicine has given her hope and energy to be involved in healthcare—not sick care.

Cara Suter, PT, DPT, NCPT is a physical therapist and the care coordinator and program facilitator of the Lifestyle Medicine Program. As a PT, she evaluates and treats patients as a whole in order to get to the root cause of an issue. This mirrors the goal of Lifestyle Medicine, which is seeing a person as a whole in order to optimize their health.

Dana Rose, PT, DPT, OCS, SFMA is a physical therapist at Hospital for Special Surgery Rehabilitation and Performance and the Director at HSS Midtown and HSS Brooklyn. She has experience with and enjoys treating a variety of surgical and nonsurgical conditions. As a PT, she evaluates and treats patients as a whole in order to get to the root cause of an issue. 

Karen Griffin, NP, Diplomate ACLM is a nurse practitioner who has worked at HSS for over 13 years. Prior to HSS, she was a travel nurse and had the opportunity to work in several different areas of the country, primarily in cardiology and oncology.  The unifying factor of her varied work experiences has been witnessing the impact of lifestyle choices on health outcomes. Karen is excited to be part of the Lifestyle Medicine team and empower patients to make holistic lifestyle changes that can optimize their health. She is particularly interested in shifting the focus to give individuals the option to be active participants in their well care.

Mark Pagba has served in many roles in his many years of work at HSS and now coordinates scheduling for patients across the disciplines and group programs. His work as a member of the Lifestyle Medicine team has made him realize how important it is to take care of the whole body, physically but most importantly mentally. He views the lifestyle medicine program to help patients adapt their lives and achieve wellness.

Jennifer Cheng, PhD is the Research Manager for the Department of Physiatry and the HSS Lifestyle Medicine program. She has had an interest in many aspects of lifestyle medicine throughout the years. In her role, she helps investigate how lifestyle medicine can improve outcomes for patients with musculoskeletal conditions and lifestyle-related chronic diseases.

Laura Jasphy,  EdD,  LCSW,  REBT is a senior clinical social worker and health coach for the HSS Lifestyle Medicine program. Years of observing unhealthy habits within the healthcare setting inspired her to pursue a doctorate in health education at Columbia University, giving her greater insights into challenges of behavior, as well as the skills to support it. She enjoys helping others to make and sustain lifestyle changes, improve their quality of life, and return to activities that bring them joy.

Kelyssa Hall, CSCS, CEAS is an exercise physiologist. She has a passion for helping people do the things they love to do and strives to empower people to live their best lives by working with them to initiate physical activity habits into their daily routines while focusing on functional movement, balance, mobility, strength, posture and endurance. She enjoys sharing her 30 years of experience educating people and motivating them to live and be healthier.

Kate Cohen, MS RDN is a registered dietitian nutritionist and is the Clinical Nutritionist for the HSS Lifestyle Medicine Program. Prior to HSS, she was the dietitian for the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC where she counseled patients on using diet & lifestyle strategies for chronic disease management and prevention. In her role at HSS, she strives to provide patients the knowledge, tools & inspiration they need to be proactive about their own health journey.

HSS Lifestyle Medicine Consultants

Nartana Mehta, RD is a registered dietitian specializing in disease prevention, management and reversal, and weight management through whole-food, plant-based nutrition and improved gut health. She is the dietician for the Washington University Living Well Center, in St. Louis, Missouri. She serves as a consultant to the HSS lifestyle medicine program, with a specific focus on nutrition and gut health as they relate to arthritis and musculoskeletal conditions and lifestyle changes including a whole food plant-predominant lifestyle to prevent, treat and reverse lifestyle-related chronic disease and improve pain and function in people.

HSS Presents Podcast

Short, informative conversations between HSS faculty, alumni, and world-renowned thought leaders. 

• Lifestyle Medicine: The Surgeon's Perspective with Fred D. Cushner, MD and Heidi Prather, DO
  Listen on Apple Podcast, Spotify or download ConveyMD on Google Play