Monique Yohanan, MD, MPH, is the director of the Center for Better Health at Independent Women. As a physician executive and healthcare innovation leader, Yohanan has more than 20 years of experience at the intersection of clinical medicine, technology, and health policy. She formerly served as Chief Medical Officer at Adia Health, where she led the development of AI-powered clinical decision support systems that enhance diagnostic accuracy and patient care. Before that, she led Change Healthcare’s InterQual division as Chief Medical Officer, overseeing clinical decision support solutions used by more than 100 payers and 6,000 providers nationwide. Dr. Yohanan received her medical degree from the Dartmouth/Brown Program in Medicine and a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins. Dr. Yohanan completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Harvard and a fellowship in Geriatrics at Stanford. She has held faculty appointments at UCSF and Stanford, and maintains active licensure and board certification in Internal Medicine.
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Appearances (1)
2026-02-17
Understanding the New Dietary Guidelines with Monique YohananIn this episode of the Health Policy Podcast, host Brian Hyde interviews Monique Yohanan, MD, MPH, a Senior Fellow at Independent Women, about the newly released dietary guidelines for Americans. Yohanan discusses the shift from the traditional food pyramid to a focus on protein, healthy fats, and fiber, emphasizing the importance of real, minimally processed foods. She also addresses the role of politics in dietary recommendations and the implications of these guidelines for public health and nutrition.
Notable quotes
“Big picture, think about the old food pyramid and flip it upside down.”
“This is a diet that's fine if you're vegan, it's fine if you're keto.”
“The reality is the old dietary recommendations were a setup for people to eat more calories and to gain weight.”
“We are all very different and the exact form of this, which is why I don't think it's a good idea to focus on number of servings or anything.”
“If your grandmother wouldn't recognize it, probably not a great idea to eat it.”
“Eating high protein foods and full fat dairy is that you get full faster.”