About Dr.Melissa Mondala

Melissa Mondala, MD, MHA, MS

Dr. Melissa Mondala is a triple specialist of family medicine, lifestyle medicine, and primary care psychiatry. She is one of the first and youngest nationally recognized lifestyle medicine fellows and is a strong community health advocate. She serves as faculty at Loma Linda University Preventive/Lifestyle Medicine Department, which is one of the blue zones for longevity. She currently sits on the American College of Lifestyle Medicine Board of Directors and is a Diplomate of Lifestyle Medicine. She planted seeds of change in the community through lecturing at local medical school, veg fest, and virtual summits. She has devoted decades of volunteer work in underserved communities in California and internationally. She has been featured in popular media, such as Forbes, Local Newsoutlets, and Social Media. She prioritizes lifestyle modifications to optimize health. Her passion is educating and empowering healthy living and cooking.

She has led several tobacco cessation groups, taught Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) lectures, and contributed to the Lifestyle Medicine Residency curriculum. To augment her training, she has completed observerships at the Weimar Institute’s NEWSTART, TrueNorth, and St. Helena’s TakeTEN, three intensive lifestyle change programs. She has served the underserved in California, China, and the Philippines. While serving in Guam, she had the opportunity to lead Lifestyle Medicine visits and tobacco cessation groups. She is passionate about treating the underlying cause of disease and teaching transformative healthy lifestyle behaviors. She focuses on disease-specific lifestyle recommendations and consequently, she worked with patients for reversal of type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, hypertension, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, rhinosinusitis, mood disorders, functional abdominal pain/irritable bowel syndrome, substance abuse, joint pain, brain fog, and early stage kidney disease. Through her lifestyle medicine rehabilitation experience with stroke and heart disease patients, she has implemented therapeutic lifestyle medicine recommendations in various settings, age groups, health conditions, including adolescent psychiatry, student health, sickle cell anemia, and underserved populations. 

She is an uniquely engaging motivational speaker that brings evidence based methods to combat chronic disease and uplifts potential barriers through self-empowerment and self-compassion.