Beth Pegg Frates

Assistant Professor, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

Director of Wellness Programming at the Stroke Institute, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital

Director of Lifestyle Medicine and Wellness, Department of Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital

Beth Frates, MD, is trained as a physiatrist and a health and wellness coach. Her expertise is in lifestyle medicine, and she works to empower patients to reach their optimal level of wellness by adopting healthy habits. At Harvard Medical School, Beth created the first Lifestyle Medicine Interest Group in 2008, which is still thriving today. She is an award-winning teacher at Harvard Medical School, where she is an assistant clinical professor, and she developed and taught a college lifestyle medicine curriculum at the Harvard Extension School, which is one of the most popular courses offered at the school. She shared a lifestyle medicine syllabus, which can be downloaded through the ACLM website, in hopes that her work can serve as a template for other instructors and professors hoping to teach a course in lifestyle medicine. In addition, Dr. Frates shared her PowerPoints and curriculum in lifestyle medicine and co-created a LM Curriculum 101 which is free and accessible through the ACLM website. As the Director of Wellness Programming at the Stroke Institute for Research and Recovery at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Dr. Frates has created and implemented a 12 Step wellness program, PAVING the Path to Wellness™ for patients and providers alike. As the Director of Lifestyle Medicine and Wellness for the Department of Surgery at Mass General Hospital, Dr. Frates is well versed in physician wellbeing programing. Dr. Frates is co-author of the book Life After Stroke: The Guide to Recovering Your Health and Preventing Another Stroke and co-author of three chapters on behavior change in different medical textbooks. Recently, she co-authored The Lifestyle Medicine Handbook: An Introduction to the Power of Healthy Habits which was ranked in the top 20 by Book Authority for medical book released in 2018. In August of 2020, Dr. Frates was voted President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.