Exclusive Talks

Dr Babai László is a licensed physician and one of Hungary’s leading advocates of lifestyle medicine. He believes health is shaped primarily by the choices and environments of everyday life, well beyond the walls of the healthcare system, a conviction that led him to found the “Mozgás Receptre” (Exercise on Prescription) program in Hungary. His talk revisits the 1986 Ottawa Charter, comparing health trends since then across the United States, Canada, the European Union and Hungary, and asks whether we need a new framework for creating health in everyday life.

Sahar Haroon is a dentist and CEO of the Swiss Longevity Dental Boutique. At ELMO 2026 she explores oral health as a key pillar of lifestyle medicine and healthy ageing.

Betzabel Cajiao Garcia leads projects at Fundashon Prevenshon. She presents Vita, a population-based prevention program tackling the heavy burden of non-communicable diseases in Curaçao.

Dr Ioannis Arkadianos is a medical doctor and President of the European Lifestyle Medicine Organization (ELMO). He speaks on lifestyle medicine and longevity.

Dr. Chris Bachtsetzis practices General Internal and Lifestyle Medicine in Switzerland, focusing on prevention, healthspan and longevity, and combines more than 20 years of international clinical, scientific and healthcare leadership experience with an evidence-based, personalized approach to healthy ageing. He holds a BSc in Biomedical Sciences and an MD from the University of Nicosia Medical School, a PhD from European University Cyprus, and completed postgraduate studies in Patient Safety at the University of Oxford. Since 2022 he has worked with internationally renowned institutions including the Chenot Group and The Kusnacht Practice, and from 2024 to 2026 served as Longevity Doctor at Longevity Center Switzerland in Zurich. Since April 2026 he practices across medical groups in the Canton of Zurich, helping patients improve their long-term health through Preventive, Predictive and Personalised Medicine (3PM) and Lifestyle Medicine. At ELMO 2026, his talk explores the science of men's longevity: lifestyle medicine, hormonal health and TRT.

Philippe Weissenberg-Anaboli is a veterinary doctor with an MPH, working at the European Commission on outbreak preparedness and response, One Health and health policy. He examines how our lifestyle choices shape agrifood systems, biodiversity loss and antimicrobial resistance, from the fork to the farm.

Zuzanna Zielinska is an environmental nutritionist. She shares her 'Food is Medicine' work, including produce-prescription programs for type 2 diabetes patients in Rotterdam.

Dr Milli Raizada is a UK General Practitioner, Senior Clinical Lecturer at Lancaster Medical School, lifestyle medicine physician and researcher with a specialist interest in women's hormonal and metabolic health. She is undertaking a PhD at Lancaster University investigating metabolic dysfunction in PCOS, is a Fellow of the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine and author of the bestselling book 'Happy Hormones, Happy You'. Her talk, 'PCOS Beyond Weight: The Metabolic Story We Are Missing', shares insights from lean and non-lean phenotypes and their implications for lifestyle care.

Professor Georgios K. Sakkas is Professor of Clinical Exercise Physiology at the Department of Physical Education and Sport Science, University of Thessaly, Greece, and Academic Director of the International MSc in Lifestyle Medicine. He holds a PhD in Clinical Exercise Physiology from Manchester Metropolitan University and completed postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco. His research focuses on therapeutic exercise and lifestyle-based, non-pharmacological interventions for people living with chronic diseases, with particular interests in kidney disease, sleep disorders, neuromuscular health, rehabilitation and quality of life. His talk is 'The Climate Within Us: How Lifestyle and Environmental Stress Shape the Gut-Kidney-Brain Axis'.

Dr Sunil Kumar is an anesthesiologist, dual board-certified Lifestyle Medicine Physician, and the Lifestyle Medicine Lead at the WHO Collaborating Centre at Imperial College London. He is the creator of the PeriopLM framework and author of 'The Power of Preparation for Surgery'. He has spoken in over 15 countries on prehabilitation, prevention and healthcare transformation. His talk, 'Surgical Fuel: Nutritional Prehabilitation in the Perioperative Pathway', reframes nutrition as a core component of surgical prehabilitation, building metabolic reserve, muscle mass and immune resilience to drive better outcomes and faster recovery. The core message: recovery is built before the incision, not after it.

Ioan Hanes, MD is Vice-president of the European Lifestyle Medicine Organization (ELMO), founder of the Belgian Lifestyle Medicine Organisation (BELMO) and Coordinator of the 7th European Lifestyle Medicine Congress. His talk covers lifestyle intervention and male fertility.

Karoline Frey is a fourth-year Obstetrics and Gynaecology resident in Fribourg, Switzerland, certified in Lifestyle Medicine (ELMO, 2026), with interests in women's health, sexual and reproductive health and preventive medicine. Her talk, 'No Pill, No Problem: Rethinking Dysmenorrhea', explores evidence-based lifestyle strategies for menstrual pain.

Victoria Pena Acuna is a clinical dietitian and health coach. Her talk, 'Beyond Eat Mediterranean: Building an Evidence-Based Nutritional Framework for Lifestyle Medicine', moves past generic dietary advice towards a structured, evidence-based framework.

Eleni Prifti is an environmental health researcher with the European Lifestyle Medicine Organization. She presents the ELMO Environmental and Planetary Health Hub and Certificate, and her work turning pesticide science into a practical lifestyle medicine approach.

Professor Christina Karatzaferi is Professor of Exercise Physiology and Myology and Dean of the School of Physical Education, Sport Science and Dietetics at the University of Thessaly, Greece. She holds an MSc in Exercise Physiology from Loughborough University and a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University, with research and teaching appointments in the United Kingdom and the United States, including the University of Edinburgh and the University of California, San Francisco. Her research lies at the intersection of skeletal-muscle physiology, biophysics, metabolism, fatigue, ageing and chronic disease. Her talk is 'Lifestyle Oncology: From Cancer Prevention to Supportive Care Through Lifestyle Medicine'.

Professor Michel Poulain is the demographer who scientifically identified the original Blue Zones. He also leads the Longevity track on Friday, opening the day with the history of the Blue Zones and the seven Living Blue Zone principles.

Marcelo Fiszman is a physician and biomedical informatics researcher at PUC-RJ. His work brings artificial intelligence, semantic interoperability, biomedical ontologies and knowledge graphs together to make lifestyle medicine computable, representing and integrating lifestyle factors with clinical and biomedical data. His talk also shows how AI can help explain the mechanisms underlying salutogenesis by combining biological, behavioral, environmental and psychosocial evidence, including emerging research on nutrition and the gut microbiome, and sets out the informatics infrastructure needed to translate lifestyle interventions into scalable, interoperable healthcare solutions.

After twenty years as an anesthesiologist in academic hospitals, Els Pastijn moved her focus to preventive medicine. Working in high-performance environments gave her a broad medical foundation, but it also showed her the consequences of suboptimal health guidance: countless women with hip fractures, vascular problems and more that earlier intervention might have prevented. That led her to specialize in menopause, lifestyle medicine and sports medicine. She now runs one-to-one consultations for women in (peri)menopause, lectures at a college training menopause consultants, and speaks publicly on midlife health, hormones and the role of movement and sport in lifelong health.

Dr Raquel Gómez-Bravo is a Spanish family physician and clinical researcher based in Luxembourg. She is a clinical researcher at the Centre Hospitalier Neuro-Psychiatrique (Rehaklinik) and the University of Luxembourg, and practises primary care at the Centre Médical Steinsel. She holds an MD, an MSc and a PhD in Psychology, with particular expertise in intimate partner and family violence and their management in primary care. Her research spans primary care, violence and abuse, Long COVID, digital health, women’s health and medical education, with more than 70 scientific articles and book chapters to her name. She chairs the OECD PaRIS Primary Care Professionals Network, is Vice-Chair of the WONCA Europe Working Party on Policy Advocacy and a member of the WHO SIVAWG Technical Expert Panel, and is Past Chair of the WONCA Special Interest Group on Prevention and Response to Abuse and Violence. She has contributed to major European collaborative research initiatives including Eurodata, and works with WHO Europe on women’s health, violence prevention and primary healthcare. She sits on the editorial boards of BJGP Open, Education for Primary Care, the Portuguese Journal of General and Family Medicine and The Anatolian Journal of Family Medicine. In Luxembourg she is Vice-President of ALFORMEC and of the Société Scientifique Luxembourgeoise de Médecine Générale, contributing to family medicine, continuing medical education and primary care policy.

Sophie Millar is EU Policy and Advocacy Manager at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and Secretariat of the European Alliance for Cardiovascular Health (EACH). She leads advocacy and stakeholder engagement to strengthen cardiovascular health policy across Europe, working with EU institutions, national policymakers, healthcare professionals, patient organizations, researchers and industry partners. Through EACH she brings a broad alliance of partners together behind prevention, early detection, equitable access to care and the implementation of the EU Cardiovascular Health Plan. Based in Brussels, she works at the intersection of science, policy and advocacy. Her talk is ‘Europe’s Cardiovascular Vision and Why Partnerships Matter’.

Dr Sara Ares-Blanco is a family doctor at the Federica Montseny Health Centre in Madrid, combining clinical practice with teaching and research. She holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Public Health (Rey Juan Carlos University, 2025) and is a researcher at the Gregorio Marañón Health Research Institute and the RICORS-RICAPPS network of the Carlos III Health Institute. Her work focuses on primary care, European health systems, preventive care and health inequities. She has co-led European projects such as Eurodata and the Mapping Family Medicine Postgraduate Training project, authored more than 40 scientific publications and serves as an editor for BMC Primary Care. She chairs the WONCA Europe Working Party on Policy Advocacy, coordinates the EGPRN Communication and Public Relations Group and is a member of the OECD PaRIS Primary Care Professionals Network, collaborating with WHO Europe on primary care policy.

Angel Gonzalez is a Family Doctor and Public Health physician with a master’s degree in Health Economics. Over the past ten years, he has worked across clinical Primary Care, Public Health, Academia, and Health Systems and Policy Consulting, both nationally and internationally. He currently works at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

I am an MSc student in Economic Behavior Analysis at Corvinus University of Budapest and an early-stage researcher interested in the intersection of behavioral science and lifestyle medicine. My work focuses on understanding how behavioral insights can support sustainable health behavior change, particularly in physical activity and cardiovascular health. I am currently conducting research on a behavioral intervention designed to support long-term physical activity following cardiac rehabilitation.

Dr. Dora Urge is a medical doctor with a professional focus on public health, lifestyle medicine, preventive health, and the relationship between environmental factors and human health. Her work is driven by a strong commitment to improving population health through evidence-based preventive strategies and interdisciplinary collaboration. She works at the Hungarian Society of Lifestyle Medicine, where she coordinates scientific activities and research projects promoting physical activity and healthy behavior change as part of a multidisciplinary team.

Professor Klaudia Vivien Nagy is Associate Professor of Cardiology at the Semmelweis University Heart and Vascular Center in Budapest, a consultant cardiologist and electrophysiologist, and Hungary’s first ESA-certified flight surgeon. She holds an MD from Semmelweis (summa cum laude), a PhD on cardiac resynchronization therapy and an MSc in Health Economics from the London School of Economics, and has been a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology since 2022. She heads the Semmelweis Digital and E-Cardiology, Telemedicine and AI Research Group and is Deputy Head of the Department of Aviation and Space Medicine. As a flight surgeon for the European Space Agency she cared for Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu during Axiom Mission 4 to the International Space Station, and is the assigned flight surgeon for ESA astronaut Raphaël Liégeois’s upcoming six-month mission. She sits on the ESC Advocacy Committee and the ESC AI Gateway, and supervises nine doctoral students. Her talk is ‘The Future of Cardiovascular Prevention in Europe’.

Andrée Rochfort is Assistant Clinical Professor at the School of Medicine, University College Dublin, where she lectures medical students and postgraduate courses on lifestyle medicine, self-care, personal and professional development. She is Director of Quality Improvement, Health & Wellbeing at the Irish College of GPs in Dublin, where she leads the national Doctor Health Program and hosts monthly live webinars on lifestyle medicine and wellbeing. At European level she chairs the WONCA Europe Special Interest Group in Doctor Health & Wellbeing, is an executive member of the WONCA Europe Working Party for Policy and Advocacy for Primary Care, and is the European delegate to the global Working Party for Planetary Health. She is a past President and Chair of EQuiP, the European Society for Quality & Safety in Family Medicine, and a member of the OECD PaRIS Primary Care Professionals Network. A family doctor with 35 years of clinical experience and 25 years in academia, she has contributed to national standards on doctor health and to the national and European postgraduate training curricula for family medicine. She has published journal articles and book chapters on self-management support, digital healthcare and quality improvement, and edited a medical textbook. She is co-chair of the Irish Society of Lifestyle Medicine, completed the ELMO certificate in 2021 and was elected to the ELMO board in 2022.

Andrew Basaly is a hospitalist in Richmond, Virginia, with a background in family medicine and his training in Nashville, Tennessee. His clinical practice centres on the care of acutely ill hospitalised patients, combining evidence-based medicine with a patient-centred approach. He is committed to lifestyle medicine and patient coaching, in the conviction that sustainable lifestyle change is essential to improving long-term health outcomes, and he values collaboration, continuous learning and the chance to share what he knows with colleagues.