About PBHP UK
Plant-based health professionals UK is a Community Interest Company dedicated to providing education, advocacy and interventions on whole food plant-based nutrition and lifestyle medicine for prevention and treatment of chronic disease and for supporting planetary health. In addition to practicing conventional medicine, we are passionate about promoting health and well-being using a plant-based, lifestyle approach. There is no doubt that conventional medicine has resulted in some astonishing advances in patient care. However, the current model of healthcare in the UK focuses primarily on treating established disease, rather than emphasising interventions that could prevent or reduce the burden of chronic disease.
We hope to provide a valuable resource for the education of healthcare professionals and the general public alike and aim to empower individuals to take control of their own health and share this information with patients, friends and their families. We also use our expertise to inform policy makers on public health and planetary health.
Directors
Shireen Kassam MBBS, FRCPATH, PHD, DipIBLM
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Dr Shireen Kassam is a Consultant Haematologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at King’s College Hospital, London with a specialist interest in the treatment of lymphoma. She is also a Visiting-Professor at University of Winchester, Hampshire, where she has developed and facilitates the UK’s first University-based course on plant-based nutrition. In 2023 she launched a course on lifestyle medicine for cancer.
Shireen is passionate about promoting plant-based nutrition for the prevention and reversal of chronic disease and for maintaining optimal health after treatment for cancer. In 2019 she became certified as a Lifestyle Medicine Physician.
Shireen founded Plant-Based Health Professionals UK in 2018, a non-profit, membership organisation whose mission is to provide evidence-based education on whole food plant-based nutrition and lifestyle medicine.
Shireen qualified as a doctor in 2000. During her training, she completed a PhD, which investigated the role of selenium in sensitising cancer cells to chemotherapy. Shireen has published a number of peer-reviewed papers in the field of lymphoma. She is also the Sustainability Lead for Pathology Practice at the Royal College of Pathologists.
Her first book, Eating Plant-Based, Scientific Answers to Your Nutrition Questions, co-authored with her sister Zahra, was published in January 2022. She has also co-edited the textbook Plant-Based Nutrition in Clinical Practice, published in September 2022.
Dr Aryan Tavakkoli MBBS MRCP FRACP CFMP
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Dr Tavakkoli is a consultant physician with a 25-year background in hospital medicine.
She is the medical director of Quantum Clinic, where she provides progressive and holistic cancer support. She addresses root causes of illness using functional medicine techniques and modification of lifestyle factors, combined with integrative therapies.
Dr Tavakkoli has written widely about plant-based nutrition and is regularly invited to speak at conferences about integrative cancer support. She advocates whole-food plant-based nutrition to her patients.
Ben Day
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Ben’s professional background is in policy, strategy and finance, and he has worked in a number of roles in the Civil Service, NHS and private sector, including many years working on healthcare and environmental issues. He currently works in strategic finance for the NHS.
Dr Rajiv Bajekal MS, FRCS Orth. MCh Orth. IBLM
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Dr Rajiv Bajekal (MS, FRCS Orth. MCh Orth. IBLM) is a Consultant Spinal Surgeon practicing in London. He has over 35 years’ experience in Orthopaedics and Spinal surgery. He retired from the NHS from the Royal Free London NHS Trust and now practices in the Independent sector. His surgical practice is mainly in the lumbar spine with a keen interest in managing Sciatica, low back pain, Spinal Stenosis, Osteoporotic fractures, and infections. He is particularly keen to find simple and often non-surgical solutions for patients in severe pain and practices lifestyle medicine to look at problems more holistically rather than just the presenting problem. He is passionate about teaching and lecturing, often making difficult areas of spinal surgery easy to understand.
Rajiv was a senior examiner for the FRCS Trauma and Orthopaedic Examination and lectures widely Nationally and Internationally for General Practitioners and is part of a group called Total Orthopaedics, which provides high quality patient focussed care. He is a Board-Certified Lifestyle Medicine Physician who has personally experienced the healing benefits of a whole food plant-based diet and has since become a passionate advocate for lifestyle medicine with his patients. He has featured in conversations with Chef AJ and Ocean Robbins of the Food Revolution Network in very popular YouTube videos. More recently he has lectured on the Holistic Holiday at Sea, plant based cruise to 1800 attendees on back pain and prevention of osteoporosis on a plant-based diet.
He has written a module and lectured on the UK’s first plant-based nutrition University course at the University of Winchester. He has also co-authored a chapter on bone health for PBHP UK textbook titled ‘Plant-Based Nutrition in Clinical Practice’.
For more information visit www.rajivbajekal.com and follow him on Instagram @drrajivbajekal.
Overview of the organisation
Overview: brief version
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Overview: full version
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Awards
The Mahaveer Award 2024
Shireen Kassam has received the Mahaveer Award from the Indian Vegetarian Society. This award is given to individuals and organisations in recognition of their work to promote a vegan lifestyle.
The Vegfest UK Awards 2022
Thanks to everyone who voted for us, we’ve been awarded the “Best Vegan Initiative” in the Vegfest UK 2022 awards. We’re so proud of this recognition of our work.
The Vegfest UK Awards 2020
We’re proud to have been awarded the “Best Vegan Initiative” in the Vegfest UK 2020 awards. Thanks to everyone who voted for us!
The Shining World Compassion Award
Transcript of the award letter
The Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association
www.godsdirectcontact.org, email: SMCH@cmchia.com
Tel: 1-408-809-3857; Fax: 1-408-273-6412
21st October 2020
Dr Shireen Kassam MBBS, FRCPATH, PHD
Founder and Director of Plant-Based Health Professionals UK
United Kingdom
Esteemed Doctor,
It is with great admiration and gratitude that we present to Plant-Based Health Professionals the “Shining World Compassion Award” for providing “evidence-based education on whole food plant-based nutrition for the prevention and treatment of chronic disease.” This Award is presented in recognition of your passionate, exemplary efforts to educate health professionals, and ultimately all citizens, of the imperative need to adopt the loving vegan diet. Quoting scientific research, the link between meat and disease is irrefutable, as is the solution to restore health; change food choices to select plant-based nutrition.
Plant-Based Health Professionals UK consists of a group of vegan doctors advocating for a nobler way of eating. The group joined together with the global No Meat May campaign to urge the public to be vegan to help the world avoid future pandemics. You warned as have scientists worldwide, the future pandemics could arise from intensive livestock systems, which produce more than 90% of the meat consumed worldwide today. A member and well-known physician Dr. Gemma Newman stated, “Our industrial scale factory farms are like a ticking time bomb – yet I can guarantee that lentils will not spark a viral pandemic anytime soon.” Your doctors urged the public to participate in support programs like No Meat May, which saw a record 33,000 signatories this year compared to 10,000 in 2019.
For commitment to save lives by promoting disease prevention via veganism, for courageously using your brilliant God-given skills to convince others of the benefits of plant-based nutrition, and for your exemplary patient care; in God’s merciful love we are honoured to salute the praiseworthy, compassionate deeds of Plant-Based Health Professionals UK. May Heaven forever bless all involved in working toward a peaceful and love-filled vegan future.
With Love and Immense Blessings in God’s Protection
Supreme Master Ching Hai
