LIFESTYLE MEDICINE TEAM

Michelle Hauser

Michelle Hauser, MD, MS, MPA, FACLM, Chef

Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine

Michelle Hauser, MD, MS, MPA, FACLM, Chef is board certified in internal medicine and completed medical school, internal medicine residency, the Zuckerman Fellowship in Leadership and Public Service, and a Master of Public Policy and Administration degree at Harvard, as well as a Master of Science in Epidemiology and Clinical Research and the Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at Stanford. She is a certified chef via Le Cordon Bleu and a Fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine where she has also served on the Board of Directors and published the Culinary Medicine Curriculum–the first comprehensive, open-source culinary medicine curriculum for health professional training programs.

As Clinical Associate Professor (Affiliated) in Primary Care and Population Health at Stanford University School of Medicine, she teaches medical students nutrition, culinary medicine, and lifestyle medicine; she is also a teaching attending for internal medicine residents, psychiatry interns, medical students, and other trainees. At the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System (VAPAHCS), Dr. Hauser practices obesity medicine including a novel series of group medical appointments focused jointly on lifestyle and medical management of obesity. Additionally, Dr. Hauser practices primary care-internal medicine and serves as teaching attending at both the VAPAHCS (General Medicine Clinic, Palo Alto, CA) and the San Mateo County Health System (Fair Oaks Health Center, Redwood City, CA).

Much of her clinical experience has been within public institutions focused on care for ethnically diverse and underserved populations. After seeing a high prevalence of food insecurity among her patients, Dr. Hauser worked to develop strong community partnerships to address the lack of access to healthy food and practical nutrition education. For these efforts, she won the San Mateo Medical Center Above & Beyond Award, was named Local Hunger Fighter by Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties (California), and was given an honorable mention as Food Hero for the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts. For practicing compassionate care for all, regardless of background, and advocating for the needs of underserved patients, she won the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award.

Her research, clinical, and community work blend her training in medicine, public policy, nutrition, epidemiology, and culinary arts to focus on improving education and access to delicious, healthy food for medical professionals and the general public. Her research has been published in top medical and nutrition journals, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and she has been interviewed on cooking and health by media organizations such as the New York Times, Bloomberg News, CNN, NPR, Stanford Medicine, and Harvard Health Publications. In her spare time, she loves cooking multicultural, plant-based dishes, trail running, hiking, and spending time with her family.  She and her husband also created the Chef in Medicine website which aims to share culinary medicine information with the general public.