Our Mission

PMRI is a non-profit, public institute dedicated to research, education and service demonstrating how lifestyle medicine can reverse, treat and prevent chronic diseases.

Our work is grounded in compassion and dedication to service. PMRI achieves its mission by:

Publishing research that informs the practice of medicine and allows the individual to take personal responsibility for health
Collaborating with leaders in the scientific community
Educating and training health professionals and the public about preventive medicine and the benefits of lifestyle change

Our Goals

The Preventive Medicine Research Institute (PMRI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit public organization founded in 1984 by Dean Ornish, M.D. Its work is dedicated to providing the highest quality scientific research and education that are grounded in compassion and dedicated to service.

PMRI’s mission is to conduct pioneering research evaluating the power of lifestyle medicine—eat well, move more, stress less, love more—to reverse and prevent the progression of the most common, costly, and debilitating chronic diseases, which had previously been thought impossible. PMRI’s research uses the latest in high-tech medical technologies to prove the power of these low-tech lifestyle changes.

Scientists at PMRI were the first to prove that these lifestyle changes may reverse the progression of even severe coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, early-stage prostate cancer, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and other chronic diseases.

PMRI published research with Nobel Laureate Elizabeth Blackburn showing, for the first time, that lifestyle changes may lengthen telomeres, thereby reversing aging on a cellular level. We also published research with J. Craig Venter, the first to sequence the human genome, showing that changing lifestyle changes your genes—turning on hundreds of genes that keep us healthy and turning off hundreds of genes that predispose us to illness.

Continuing this tradition of innovation, PMRI is now conducting the first randomized controlled trial to determine if Alzheimer’s disease can be reversed by making these lifestyle changes. There are currently no highly effective drugs for either treating or preventing Alzheimer’s disease. When you lose your memories, you lose everything.

Also, PMRI is developing innovative ways of making better health care available to more people at lower cost. To that end, Dr. Ornish’s lifestyle medicine program was the first to receive Medicare coverage and is also reimbursed by many of the major insurance companies at hospitals, clinics, and physician groups nationwide. They are achieving bigger changes in lifestyle, better clinical outcomes, larger cost savings, and higher adherence than have ever been accomplished.

PMRI’s work is redefining what is possible, thereby giving millions of people new hope and new choices.