Turning Awareness into Action: Alcohol & Breast Cancer Prevention

What if one of the leading preventable causes of cancer is also one of the most overlooked?

In this episode of LM in Motion, host Dawson Myers sits down with Dr. Elizabeth Farkouh, Internal Medicine resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Clinical Fellow at Harvard Medical School, to explore a powerful, trainee-led initiative focused on alcohol use and breast cancer risk.

Despite alcohol being a known carcinogen—and a significant contributor to breast cancer risk—many patients remain unaware of the connection. Dr. Farkouh shares how this gap in awareness inspired her to develop a scalable educational intervention during medical school, using simple tools to create real-world impact.

Together, they walk through:

1. How she identified the problem and built momentum around it

2. The process of turning an idea into a funded, research-backed project

3. The challenges of gaining buy-in and navigating limited resources

4. Early insights from her ongoing randomized controlled trial

5. Practical advice for trainees looking to launch their own initiatives

This episode is a reminder that meaningful change in healthcare doesn’t always require complex solutions—it starts with identifying a gap, taking action, and empowering patients with the information they deserve.

🎧 Whether you’re a trainee, clinician, or lifestyle medicine leader, you’ll walk away with tangible ideas for bringing prevention-focused care into practice.

Review Dr. Farkouh's research: ⁠https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehaf548

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The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) is the medical professional society for physicians and other professionals dedicated to clinical and worksite practice of lifestyle medicine as the foundation of a transformed and sustainable healthcare system. Lifestyle medicine is a medical specialty that uses therapeutic lifestyle interventions as a primary modality to treat chronic conditions including, but not limited to, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.

Lifestyle medicine-certified clinicians are trained to apply evidence-based, whole-person, prescriptive lifestyle change to treat and, when used intensively, often reverse such conditions. Applying the six pillars of lifestyle medicine—a whole-food, plant-predominant eating pattern, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances, and positive social connections—also provides effective prevention for these conditions.

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