A Learner’s Journey in Advancing Lifestyle Medicine

Dr. Ifeoma Monye started her career as a physician determined to find better, more accessible paths to health. After decades of clinical practice across the UK and Nigeria, Dr. Monye has made it her mission to help further the lifestyle medicine movement across Africa. Today, she boasts many titles, including chief consultant family physician; founder and CEO of Brookfield Clinics Centre for Lifestyle Medicine in Abuja, Nigeria; chairman and founder of the Society of Lifestyle Medicine of Nigeria; president and co-founder of the Africa Lifestyle Medicine Council; and president of the World Lifestyle Medicine Organisation. To continue expanding her ability to guide others toward healthier, evidence-based living, Ifeoma enrolled in the Lifestyle and Wellness Coaching executive program at Harvard Medical School.  

What has your health care career journey looked like?

I qualified as a medical doctor 38 years ago and thereafter did two post-graduate specialties in family medicine and then in pediatrics and child health. Upon completion of these specialties, I went into practice but soon became very dissatisfied with patient outcomes, especially with chronic diseases.  

After spending the first few years of my medical career in the UK, I was very keen to move to Nigeria in Africa to help with the development of health care. What was particularly discouraging was that when I got there, I was met with poor health care services and poor patients who could not afford standard conventional care in curative medicine. This sent me searching for a viable option of care where prevention is emphasized, and treatment is heavily leaned towards what is already available in the home and in the community. This led me to discover lifestyle medicine, and I joined the American College of Lifestyle Medicine to learn more.  

How have you continued to learn and grow in your health care career, particularly around lifestyle medicine?

I’ve continued to explore lifestyle medicine throughout my career and learning opportunities, which brought me to a course at Harvard led by Beth Frates, MD, FACLM, DipABLM, in 2014. The evidence for lifestyle medicine interventions was so compelling and instructive, there and then, I made up my mind to take this new specialty to my country, Nigeria, and my continent, Africa.

Straight after attending this course, I was very keen to put into practice what I had learned, and I launched the Brookfield Centre for Lifestyle Medicine in Nigeria. In 2017, I organized the very first international conference in lifestyle medicine to take place in Nigeria and the whole of Africa. Thereafter, with a strong passion to teach many more people all I had learned so that there will be many more voices to spread the life giving message of hope, health, and healing in lifestyle medicine throughout my country and continent, I founded the country's society of Lifestyle Medicine in 2017. This little light to seek a viable, evidence-based, and affordable option to better health outcomes that was lit in my heart when I arrived in Nigeria has ignited and taken root not just in my country but the entire continent of Africa. I have been at the start of the largest societies of lifestyle medicine around the globe, and in 2023, I was elected the President of the World Lifestyle Medicine Organisation.

What were you hoping to gain from the Lifestyle and Wellness Coaching program? How did you choose this program?

Having spent several years in various leadership and pioneering roles in lifestyle medicine across the globe, this recent invitation to the Lifestyle and Wellness Coaching executive program came at a time that I was seeking a refresher course in lifestyle and wellness coaching. I feel that I did not choose the program, but the program chose me. I am glad it chose me.

What attracted me to the course was the title that was not just 'wellness', but specifically "lifestyle" embedded in the course title. I was hoping to get up-to-date information from the most recent studies in lifestyle medicine coaching and techniques. I was also looking forward to learning more from Beth Frates; she is a fantastic teacher, and I couldn’t wait to sit under her tutelage once again. She did not disappoint. I enjoyed the course.

What was most impactful about your experience during the Lifestyle and Wellness Coaching program?

I found the course was relevant for anyone, no matter one's level of wellness coaching. It was delivered in such a way that those who came as starters, or as needing a refresher course (like myself), or those who are advanced will pick up something to help them along their journey. I found the micro-learning that came with the course, especially the short videos, very useful. As very busy professionals, we do not need videos longer than these. They were just perfectly timed to make the course doable because of time constraints in our lives. I also really enjoyed learning with others, and the comments each person made on the pages made for a greater learning experience. The course also gave us the opportunity to continue to meet even after the end, and a few of us are continuing to develop projects together.