Dr. Kristi Artz is board certified in emergency medicine and current Medical Director of Lifestyle Medicine and lead physician of the Culinary Medicine program at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, MI. She also serves as Medical Director of MedNow, Spectrum Health’s telehealth platform. Through her work in caring for patients in critical stages of complex chronic disease, Dr. Artz was inspired to pursue expertise in the use of lifestyle medicine for the treatment of chronic illness. She is certified in Plant-Based Nutrition through eCornell and is a Certified Culinary Medicine Specialist through Tulane University. She currently sits on the Culinary Medicine advisory board and curriculum committee at Tulane University. She is a member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.
In her current position as Medical Director of Lifestyle Medicine, she is involved in strategic planning for the creation of a sustainable virtual Lifestyle Medicine Center at Spectrum Health. She has created an implemented a two week elective in Culinary and Lifestyle Medicine for residents of the various training programs at Spectrum Health. She has led faculty as well as fellows in cardiology through Culinary Medicine programming. She is working alongside of leaders at Spectrum Health to create transformational change in menus available to hospital staff and patients through use of Culinary Medicine recipes. Dr. Artz believes in the value of educating current and future physicians in the practice of Lifestyle Medicine and truly meeting patients where they are at in order to encourage and facilitate change in their lives.
Dr. Artz graduated with a BS in Biology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MD from Wayne State University in Detroit and completed residency training in Emergency Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia 2005.