Rachele Pojednic, PhD, EdM is an Assistant Professor of Nutrition at Simmons College and a former research fellow at the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Pojednic’s work has a specific focus on physical activity and nutrition interventions for the prevention and treatment of non-communicable chronic disease. She is also the founder of the Strong Process Forum, a one day Boston-based wellness conference that includes three curated panels of scientists, farmers, journalists, athletes, clinicians and innovators designed to integrate evidence based knowledge into the health and wellness space.
Dr. Pojednic received her PhD from the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy in Biochemical and Molecular Nutrition & Exercise Physiology. Her research at Tufts was completed in the Nutrition, Exercise Physiology and Sarcopenia laboratory at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts, where she was awarded the Ruth L Kirschstein National Research Service Award by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. While at Tufts, Dr. Pojednic examined the molecular interaction between human skeletal muscle and vitamin D as well as novel contributions of speed and velocity to overall muscular power with aging.
References:
NY Times Blog
Tamar Haspel- Washington Post Journalist
Katherine Pett @nutritionwonk
Kevin Folta @kevinfolta
Pema Chodron- "Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better"
Highlights (full transcript at www.twopillspodcast.com):
I am an Assistant Professor at Simmons University here in Boston in the Nutrition department. I have a PhD in Nutritional Biochemistry, so I think about how food affects our bodies at the molecular level. I also started a conference here in Boston, the Strong Process forum. It is an all-day conference where we bring together experts in their fields and all of the people that want the information that the experts are putting out. I always say that the academics suck at Instagram. We try to pull the two worlds together. The academics are then talking to the people in the Fitness and Wellness space. The Fitness and Wellness people are than informing the scientists. They are teaching them how to communicate their message to a lay audience. It is a nice back and forth. I also walk the talk and I am an indoor cycling instructor here at Flywheel Sports and I am an ambassador with Specialized Bicycles.
L: Can you expand on why scientists suck at Instagram and how we can improve our communication about what we are doing?
R: Half of my brain has been in pretty high-level research in academia. The other half of my brain has been in the Fitness and Wellness space with my undergrad degree in exercise physiology. I started out as a personal trainer and worked as a strength coach for a lot of teams here. I found that most people in the Fitness and Wellness space are getting their information second, third, and fourth hand. I really wanted to bring those two worlds together. We are so privileged in the academic space to go to conferences and get exposure to the people doing the best research at the highest level. How can we get that information to people who need it? They are the enthusiastic and passionate practitioners on the ground. How do we teach the academics to be the first hand source of knowledge for the Fitness and Wellness experts?
At Strong Process, we have three panels: move, eat, and rest. We fill them with three experts each. We design them like a TED Talk. The moderator is a wellness expert. We try to blend this idea of trust between both worlds. I wrote a paper that is under review that describes how clinicians do not trust personal trainers with their patients. We need to build this bridge of trust between those two worlds. I saw a huge gap and Strong Process is trying to fill that up.