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Co-presented with JASA; the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President; the Brooklyn Health Disparities Center; Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan; and the SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University’s School of Public Health, Committee on Plant-Based Health and Nutrition, and Lifestyle Medicine Interest Group.

Racial injustice has many faces, one of which is chronic illness. African-American communities have historically dealt with higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease — the hidden epidemics that preceded and now exacerbate our current pandemic, as these same diseases are the underlying conditions that can lead to complications from COVID-19. However, a new approach to health and food offers both hope and a roadmap forward.

On this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Plant Powered Metro New York and our community partners mark his legacy with empowering knowledge and a call to action for all people: To bring communal healing through the food on our plates. National nutrition leaders Dr. Neal Barnard and Dr. Columbus Batiste, will explain in plain terms how diabetes and heart disease can be prevented, treated, and reversed with whole food, plant-based nutrition. We’ll round out the learning with a brief culinary demonstration of healthy soul food with Chef Brandy Cochrane. Together, we offer a path for Black communities to overcome a fraught food history that began with slavery and racism, and an opportunity for allies to heal alongside our brothers and sisters in the collective struggle for health liberation.

Neal Barnard, MD, FACC is the President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, DC, and author of Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes.

Columbus Batiste, MD, FACC, FSCAI, also known as the Healthy Heart Doc, is a board-certified Interventional Cardiologist and served from 2008-2020 as Chief of Cardiology at Kaiser Permanente Riverside and Moreno Valley Medical Centers.

Chef Brandy Cochrane is the co-founder of Plant Candy, helping families and communities find simple affordable ways to add more whole plant foods to their diets, and the founder of Entrepreneur Meal Plan.