Workshop
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Workshops
Tuesday, October 28, 2025 12:15 PM – 2:15 PM
W1 W1: The Nexus of Food as Medicine and Obesity Care
12:15 PM Where Obesity Care Meets Food as Medicine
Nicole Avena, Visiting Associate Professor, Princeton University
Background: The collision of GLP-1 medications and food as medicine is creating unprecedented opportunities—and challenges—across healthcare, food, and benefits. We're hosting an exclusive workshop to tackle the practical questions everyone's asking but few are addressing systematically.
The Challenge: While GLP-1s show promise in obesity care, they are not the panacea, and can even create new challenges. Food as medicine could be the missing piece, but the intersection of sectors, policy, payment models, and practical implementation remains largely uncharted territory. The rapidly evolving policy and regulatory landscape in this area is both a challenge and an area of aspiration: ripe with potential to unlock new thinking, forge creative coalitions and drive cross-sector collaborations to create wins for all stakeholders.
Our Aim: Bring together a broad cross-section of leaders for a focused, action-oriented workshop to explore, brainstorm and identify potential pathways around areas such as:
- Commercial Innovation: GLP-1 + FAM pairing strategies, formulation implications, stop/continue protocols
- Payment Models:Â MA benefits, Medicaid waivers, outcomes-based pricing, potential pathways to payor/employer-based coverage
- Employer Pathways: Coverage trends, benefit design, 2026 cost considerations
- Digital Experience:Â EHR integration, SKU-filtering, fulfillment verification, filtered spend / payment card tech
- Policy-Practice Bridge: State levers, federal pilots, regulatory pathways​​
INSTRUCTOR BIOGRAPHIES:
Dr. Narang is a leading endocrinologist, obesity, and culinary medicine specialist, and Director of Obesity Medicine at Endeavor Health System in Chicago. She graduated with her medical degree from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and completed her residency and endocrinology fellowship at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Narang is extremely passionate about combatting our epidemic of obesity and diabetes through targeting our food environment – this starts with educating and empowering our patients and communities to prevent long-term metabolic disease. Dr. Narang especially loves working with women at all stages of their lives, in addition to families navigating obesity and chronic disease.
Dr. Narang has been featured in several national and global media outlets, including the BBC, CNN, Wall Street Journal, and NPR, speaking on the obesity epidemic, diabetes, chronic medical weight management, and our food environment.
Jeff Gregori is an accomplished executive in data analytics and insights, with over 20 years of experience driving growth and profitability for Fortune 500 companies across industries including CPG, retail, and media. Currently serving as Director of Sales, Public Sector at NielsenIQ, Jeff leads strategic partnerships with federal agencies and non-profits, delivering innovative data solutions that inform policy and public health initiatives. Previously, Jeff held leadership roles at iHeartMedia, WarnerMedia, and The Nielsen Company, where he built and scaled analytics practices, led high-performing teams, and developed thought leadership recognized across industries. His expertise spans shopper marketing, segmentation and audience targeting with a proven track record of transforming insights into actionable strategies.
Maggie is a consultant, with over 25 years of experience as an operator, focused on developing and executing market-based programs and partnerships to solve entrenched issues in the food, retail, health and adjacent sectors. Her specialty is in developing shared value business solutions in these arenas, with a primary focus on “food as medicineâ€/food for health. In her current roles, Maggie co-leads the The Nourish Movement and serves as a strategist and subject matter expert with Clareo’s Food Practice Area. Additionally, Maggie offers advisory services to social enterprise and non-profit organizations. She brings to each of her roles a focus on innovation and cross-sector, multi-stakeholder partnering, leveraging deep insights, experience and a network spanning consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail innovation, nonprofit and social enterprise, nutrition incentive programs and the aging space.
In her prior roles, Maggie directed a global partnership strategy for PepsiCo, working across corporate and commercial business units to develop proactive, shared value partnerships (with retail customers, industry groups, and the public sector) connecting PepsiCo’s commercial, regulatory, and health & sustainability agendas. Prior to PepsiCo, she led the development of AARP Foundation’s SNAP and food as medicine portfolios, including Fruit and Vegetable incentive and food Rx programs; and developed and ran Fresh Savings, an innovative public-private partnership with UnitedHealthcare, Kroger, farmers markets, and USDA that provided monetary incentives for SNAP consumers to incentivize the purchase and consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Maggie serves as a board member for HERO, advancing health, performance, and well-being through employer leadership; as secretary on the executive committee of the DC Central Kitchen board; and fundraising chair on the board of Suited for Change. Maggie received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Mercer University and a Master’s degree in Social Work from The University of Georgia. She lives and operates out of Washington, D.C.
Monique Nadeau is the CEO and Co-Founder of EatLove, a San Francisco-based digital health company pioneering personalized nutrition solutions. She brings extensive experience building and scaling mission-driven organizations through strategic partnerships and collaborative leadership.
Previously, Monique co-founded and served as CEO of Hope Street Group, a national nonpartisan organization that leverages technology to mobilize professional networks for economic policy reform in health, education, and job creation. Her earlier career includes serving as the youngest Managing Director globally at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, where she specialized in investment banking and capital markets while working in London, Paris, and New York City.
A recognized voice in economic policy, Monique has advised presidential campaigns and national leaders on results-oriented economic strategies. She served as economic advisor to then Governor Mark Warner and as a board member of the Commonwealth of Virginia Public Building Authority.
Monique holds a Master's degree from Harvard University with a focus on economic policy. She completed her undergraduate education at American University's School of International Service in Washington, DC, with additional studies at L'Université Paris-Sorbonne and Universidad de Salamanca, Spain.
Dr. Nicole Avena is a neuroscientist and nutrition expert whose research bridges psychology, biology, and public health. She serves as an Associate Professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Visiting Professor of Health Psychology at Princeton University. Her pioneering work on sugar addiction and lifespan nutrition has earned recognition from the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Psychological Association, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Dr. Avena has authored over 120 peer-reviewed publications and several popular books, including Why Diets Fail and Sugarless, which explores the science of sugar addiction and how to overcome it. Her TED-Ed talk, How Sugar Affects Your Brain, is among the most viewed health talks online. Dr. Avena brings evidence-based insight to the intersection of food, behavior, and wellness—making her a leading voice in the “food as medicine†movement.
Dr. Rashim Gupta is a board-certified endocrinologist at MettaH and serves as Medical Director for North Carolina's managed Medicaid plan, where she champions healthcare equity for the state's most vulnerable populations.
Dr. Gupta completed her internal medicine/pediatrics residency at Baystate Medical Center in western Massachusetts, followed by an endocrinology fellowship at Henry Ford Medical Center in Detroit, Michigan. As a clinician, Dr. Gupta is passionate about empowering patients with the tools and knowledge to effectively manage chronic conditions, including obesity, diabetes, and metabolic disorders. She takes an innovative, collaborative approach to care—partnering with community food resources, digital health platforms, and interdisciplinary teams to address the social determinants of health that impact patient outcomes.
In her role as Medical Director, Dr. Gupta bridges clinical expertise with population health strategy, leveraging data-driven insights to improve care delivery and health outcomes for underserved communities. She is committed to transforming healthcare systems to be more accessible, equitable, and responsive to patient needs.
Scott is Co-Founder and Co-Chair of Nourish Movement (NOURISH by Clareo) – a multi-stakeholder open innovation platform committed to connecting innovators and their innovations to empower human health through food sustainably. NOURISH brings senior innovation leaders together from across the food, health and tech sectors to accelerate private sector, market-oriented innovation. Scott also leads the food sector at Clareo – a group of new business designers accelerating the future of food for health. He works at the nexus of nutrition, health & wellness and food as medicine, up and down the food value chain and across the health & wellness ecosystem, from start-ups to Fortune 100 firms. He is a featured speaker, panelist and roundtable leader at Food as Medicine Summits, Future Food Tech, Yale Center for Business and the Environment, Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Management and at organizations such as Kraft, Coca Cola, Whirlpool, The National Critical Issues Forum for Healthcare, The National Security Agency, and others.
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