Professor Lifeguard: How Wellness Can Save Lives in Florida and Beyond
As a lifeguard, Wes Smith spent twenty years focused on rescuing strangers. After losing his parents to disease, Dr. Smith turned his tenacity to saving lives through prevention. Learn how one initiative at the University of Miami is shifting the conversation from treatment to health through a powerful combination of education, research, student engagement and the tools to scale intervention.
Dr. Wes Smith is the Chair of the Undergraduate Exercise Physiology Program and the Director of the Graduate Program in Nutrition and Human Performance. Dr. Smith’s research has focused on improving muscle testing in the elderly and developing exercise strategies to combat age-associated functional decline. The recipient of several awards for outstanding teaching, Dr. Smith has championed applied academic learning by developing Guardrails, a program that engages students from the University of Miami in helping assess patient lifestyle in doctor’s offices and clinics throughout South Florida. Dr. Smith is also a Co-Founder and the Chief Scientific Officer of HealthSnap, a lifestyle data and assessment platform for health professionals that is serving clinicians and patients nationally.
