Dr. Susan Friedman, a board-certified geriatrician and internist, will speak at the Lawrence Jewish Community Congregation (LJCC) about the new field of lifestyle medicine.
Dr. Friedman will visit the LJCC (917 Highland Ave., Lawrence, KS 66044) on Thursday, Jan. 30, at 7 p.m. to talk about lifestyle medicine and its essential pillars — especially whole-food plant-based nutrition — and how they promote healthy aging.
This visit to the LJCC is part of the congregation’s ongoing Synagogue Vegan Challenge, which runs from August of 2024 through May. An endeavor of Shamayim Jewish Animal Advocacy, a nonprofit organization devoted to teaching the Jewish community about animal advocacy and veganism, the Synagogue Vegan Challenge provides training, education and funding for Jewish communities to incorporate programming about veganism and ecologically-mindful practices. Other congregations participating in the Synagogue Vegan Challenge are in Paris; Harlem, New York; and Los Angeles.
Thus far, the LJCC’s Synagogue Vegan Challenge programming has included a “Reverse Tashlich” event through the Jewish organization Repair the Sea in which the LJCC coordinated volunteers to clean up the Kansas River. The congregation has also held a Sukkot celebration and teach-in about the ecological benefits of veganism, an adults-only vegan cheese and wine tasting evening and more.
Dr. Friedman hails from Rochester, New York, and received MD and MPH degrees from Northwestern University. She completed her residency and geriatric fellowship training at Johns Hopkins Bayview in Baltimore, Maryland, and was on faculty there for five years before moving to the University of Rochester in 2000. She is a professor of medicine and has authored more than 50 papers, including as the lead author of the White Paper on Healthy Aging, published in 2018 by the American Geriatrics Society. Dr. Friedman is also the founding director of the lifestyle medicine program at the University of Rochester. Her passion is healthy aging — developing clinical, educational and systems approaches to ensuring aging well with health and dignity.
This event is free and open to the public. The LJCC does request advance registration on their website, ljcc.shulcloud.com. For those who wish to attend online, the Zoom room can be found at us02web.zoom.us/j/88205725851. Dr. Friedman’s talk will be followed by a reception of vegan fare.
