Dr. Gina has over 22 years of practice experience in pediatrics. She attended the University of Arizona College of Medicine for her M.D., where she also completed her residency training in general pediatrics. She then chose to attend a one-year fellowship in Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at The Child Development Unit, Children’s Hospital Colorado, which emphasized the evaluation of children with genetic conditions, autistic spectrum disorders, and child abuse. ‌ She then entered the field of pediatric hospitalist medicine and became the medical director of Tucson Pediatric Hospitalists. She was personally responsible for year-round, 24/7 coverage of the busy inpatient pediatric unit, well newborn nursery, emergency department consultations, supervision of the Pediatric and Family Medicine residents, procedural sedation service, and TMC pediatric hospice. She founded a child abuse review team and Tucson Lifeline for Children (TLC), a pediatric palliative care program that was the first of its kind in her area. ‌ She then moved on to another medical director position at The Painted Turtle, one of the Paul Newman Serious Fun camps for children with life-threatening medical conditions. This was another highly energized position with full responsibility for the medical care of children with kidney and liver transplants, hemophilia, spina bifida, immunodeficiencies, rheumatic conditions, skeletal dysplasia, developmental disabilities, and more, offering them the chance to experience an authentic camp experience all year. She directed a state-of-the-art, on-site medical facility and coordinated all medical services, supplies, protocols, and personnel. The camp offered specialized medical care during specific sessions, including a fully-stocked pharmacy, G-tube feedings, hemophilia care, kidney dialysis, CPAP, supplemental oxygen, tracheostomy care, and 24-hour oral and IV medication management. She made sure the nurses and physicians specializing in each medical condition were on camp to staff all sessions requiring their particular skills and expertise. She was integral in the development of sessions for children with cerebral palsy and developmental disorders.In her last years of practice, Dr. Gina decided to focus on outpatient pediatrics, working in a private office for a couple of years and providing locum tenens physician services in areas of need. After some study, she retired from practicing medicine and made the transition into medical editing and review through her new company, Helping Hands MD Editing.

Dr. Donna Schwontkowski is a retired chiropractic physician with a master’s degree in Nutrition and Herbology. She has focused her career on three primary areas: clinical nutrition, learning and memory, and health/self-improvement publications. Dr. Donna’s mission in life is to act as an intercessor for people in all three of these areas, allowing them via teaching them, working in groups with them, or mentoring them to reach their potential in health, learning and memory, and ability to transform one’s life. Dr. Donna was also a journalist for health and fitness magazines for 15 years, the editor of Sacramento, CA’s Health & Fitness Magazine, and Co-producer and host of a TV show on health for four years. She has taught hundreds of community courses on many aspects of health and natural healing to thousands of students over the years. Her accelerated learning background has also allowed her to teach thousands of college and postgraduate students science and dozens of children how to read five books in a week as well as how to learn any subject quickly, including health and science.

Lauren is a functional nutritionist and licensed therapist who takes an integrative and functional approach to mental health and overall wellness. Lauren has worked as a clinician, researcher, and writer in mental health and functional nutrition. Lauren takes a root cause approach to wellness— looking at the body, mind, and responses to our environment. Lauren is passionate about empowering others to become their own expert and advocate in terms of optimizing their health and well-being. Lauren has worked with those with various health conditions including digestive, metabolic, hormonal and mental health. Lauren has worked in outpatient and inpatient settings.

Anh Cao is a Ph.D. candidate in immunology at Harvard University. He obtained his M.Sc. Degree in immunology at University of Toronto. For the last 8 years, his research has focused on a wide range of immune cells, including B cells, T cells, and innate immune cells. His publications have been featured in high-profile journals such as Cell and Nature which have been cited over 200 times.

Dr. Xiaoxu Sean Lin is an assistant professor in the Biomedical Science Department at Feitian College in Middletown, N.Y. Dr. Lin is also a frequent analyst and commentator for Epoch Media Group, VOA, and RFA. He is a veteran who served as a U.S. Army microbiologist and also a member of Committee on the Present Danger: China.

Chian-Ruei Huang is a compassionate and dedicated Registered Dietitian Nutritionist with a wealth of experience in eating-related behavior therapy, preventative nutrition, public health nutrition, and disease nutrition. As a strong believer in the power of food and its role in the human life cycle, Chian-Ruei understands the importance of nurturing a healthy relationship with food and promoting well-being at every stage of life. Driven by her passion for holistic health, Chian-Ruei has integrated her yoga training into her clinical nutrition counseling, fostering greater understanding, communication, and empathy with her patients. This transformative practice has allowed her to connect more deeply with her patients, guiding them on their journeys towards healthier lifestyles. Throughout her career, Chian-Ruei has worked in various roles such as weight-loss nutritionist, long term care dietician, and nutrition advisor for multiple health-related brands. Her diverse experiences have provided her with the skills and knowledge needed to address a wide range of nutritional issues and collaborate with multidisciplinary teams effectively. In addition to her work as a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, Chian-Ruei is dedicated to sharing her expertise and perspective through media channels, aiming to benefit a broader audience and inspire others to embrace the essence of life through food and yoga. With her unwavering passion for holistic health and commitment to improving lives, Chian-Ruei Huang is an advocate for the integration of nutrition and wellness in everyday life.

Ari Magill, M.D. is a board-certified neurologist who received his M.D. from UT Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, TX and completed a neurology residency at the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ and a fellowship in movement disorders at the University of Colorado in Aurora, CO. He enjoys medical writing and has a special interest in cognitive, behavioral, and memory disorders and functional medicine health coaching. He is passionate about advancing dementia treatment through neuroscience research and aggressive lifestyle change aided by judicious use of supplements. Dr. Magill is an avid bicycle rider, a film enthusiast, and enjoys playing basketball in his free time. In the past, Dr. Magill worked as a neurohospitalist at Northwest Medical Center in Tucson, AZ and worked as a traumatic brain injury (TBI) exam neurologist, conducting independent TBI exams for disability assessment on veterans and active-duty military personnel. He has also worked as a physician clinical research investigator for Synexus, Cognitive Clinical Trials, and the IMA Group. Dr. Magill writes and edits on a variety of topics, including acute and chronic disease, health maintenance, and preventive care, with a focus on neurologic disease and mental health. He has been a freelance medical writer since 2016.

Anthony Cardillo is a Clinical Instructor at NYU in New York City. He is a board-certified Clinical Pathologist that specializes in the natural history of disease. He was named to The Pathologist magazine's Power List in both 2021 and 2022 as an early-career leader, and his research interests include the use of machine learning to gain new insights into traditional medicine. His recent publications have been featured in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology and the New England Journal of Medicine.

For the past 20 years most of my research has been focused on investigating the potential health benefits of various dietary components or food patterns, which have been explored in the context of randomized controlled trials in free-living adult populations. Some of the interventions have involved vegetarian diets, soy foods and soy food components, garlic, omega-3 fats/fish oil/flax oil, antioxidants, Ginkgo biloba, and popular weight loss diets. These trials have ranged in duration from 8 weeks to a year, with study outcomes that have included weight, blood lipids and lipoproteins, inflammatory markers, glucose, insulin, blood pressure and body composition. Most of these trials have been NIH-funded. The most recent of these was an NIH funded weight loss diet study - DIETFITS (Diet Intervention Examining The Factors Interacting with Treatment Success) that involved randomizing 609 generally healthy, overweight/obese adults for one year to either a Healthy Low-Fat or a Healthy Low-Carb diet. The main findings were published in JAMA in 2018, and many secondary and exploratory analyses are in progress testing and generating follow-up hypotheses. In the past few years the long-term interests of my research group have shifted to include two additional areas of inquiry. One of these is Stealth Nutrition. The central hypothesis driving this is that in order for more effective and impactful dietary improvements to be realized, public health professionals need to consider adding non-health related approaches to their strategies toolbox. Examples would be the connections between food and 1) global warming and climate change, 2) animal rights and welfare, and 3) human labor abuses (e.g., slaughterhouses, agriculture fields, fast food restaurants). An example of my ongoing research in this area is a summer Food and Farm Camp run in collaboration with the Santa Clara Unified School District since 2011. Every year ~125 kids between the ages of 5-14 years come for 1-week summer camp sessions led by Stanford undergraduates and an Education Director to tend, harvest, chop, cook, and eat vegetables...and play because it is summer camp! The objective is to study the factors influencing the behaviors and preferences that lead to maximizing vegetable consumption in kids. A second area of interest and inquiry is institutional food. Universities, worksites, hospitals, and schools order and serve a lot of food, every day. If the choices offered are healthier, the consumption behaviors will be healthier. A key factor to success in institutional food is to make the food options "unapologetically delicious" a term I borrow from Greg Drescher, a colleague and friend at the Culinary Institute of America (the other CIA). Chefs are trained to make great tasting food, and chefs in institutional food settings can be part of the solution to improving eating behaviors. In 2015 I helped to initiate a Stanford-CIA collaboration that now involves dozens of universities that have agreed to collectively use their dining halls as living laboratories to study ways to maximize the synergy of taste, health and environmental sustainability. If universities, worksites, hospitals and schools change the foods they serve, they will change the foods they order, and that kind of institutional demand can change agricultural practices - a systems-level approach to achieving healthier dietary behaviors. My long-term vision in this area is to help create a world-class Stanford Food Systems Initiative and build on the idea that Stanford is uniquely positioned geographically, culturally, and academically, to address national and global crises in the areas of obesity and diabetes that are directly related to our broken food systems.