About Ardmore Institute of Health
AIH Vision
We work for a future where healthy lifestyles provide an equitable and preferred method to prevent, treat, and reverse chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
AIH Mission
Improve the health and vitality of people to live more meaningful lives.
A Legacy of Promoting Healthy Lifestyles
Ardmore Institute of Health was established in 1947 by the Johnson Family. Dr. Otey Johnson, in 1987, left much of his estate to expand the mission.
Dr. Johnson’s interest in health and lifestyle was influenced by his family’s interest in the sanitarium movement and the Adventist principles of healthy lifestyles. An avid learner, he pursued knowledge and education to understand further how healthy lifestyle habits maintain and improve individual health. This spark continues to drive our mission to improve the health and vitality of people to live more meaningful lives.
The Lifestyle Center of America Made Lifestyle Medicine Principles Tangible
The Ardmore Institute of Health, established in the mid-1990s, operated the Lifestyle Center of America located on 1700 acres in the Arbuckle Mountains of Southern Oklahoma. The facilities offered the opportunity for patients and staff to study and learn how lifestyle change could significantly improve health.
The Lifestyle Center of America patients enjoyed multi-week visits, full meal service, fitness facilities, and medical and nutrition training.
The Lifestyle Center of America provided services designed for people interested in the prevention and/or reversal of chronic diseases, such as coronary artery disease, post-cardiac surgery, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and stress.
The Institute, after almost 20 years of operations, sought to extend the outcomes of Lifestyle Center interventions beyond the constraints of a residential campus. Closing the facility, the organization redirected resources from helping a few people a year to teaching thousands via in-person group and online group programs.
Full Plate Living Offers Nutrition Courses at No Cost
The lifestyle learnings from years of operating the Lifestyle Center of America were published as the New York Times bestseller – The Full Plate Diet. The book was developed into a facilitated group program and the Full Plate Living digital platform which AIH provides as a free service to teach lifestyle medicine nutrition principles.
Promoting Healthy Lifestyles Through Grants
The Ardmore Institute of Health believes that incorporating the principles of Lifestyle Medicine, results in a healthier, more vibrant life. The Institute promotes and funds initiatives where grantees can add to the body of lifestyle medicine and the whole health knowledge base—providing grants to mission-aligned non-profits to accelerate whole health and lifestyle medicine adoption and learnings.
Grant Enabled Healthy Lifestyle Resources
Grantee projects, collaborations, research reports, and convening learnings generate valuable resources that Ardmore Institute of Health provides to further advancement of equitable Lifestyle Medicine and Whole Health. Resources are available for consumers/patients, physicians/providers, and researchers.
The Ardmore Institute of Health (AIH) Approach to Lifestyle and Medicine
AIH seeks to support clinicians with healthy lifestyle education (CME), practice tools, and appropriate reimbursement. This clinical field of medicine is called Lifestyle Medicine and seeks to promote Whole Health.
Lifestyle Medicine* is the evidence-based science of preventing, treating, and reversing chronic disease by exchanging less healthy behaviors for healthy habits. Achieving an ecosystem that enables healthy habit adoption requires more than what happens in the doctor’s office. It is necessary to influence the community, the environment, and the local and national conversations to ensure that the healthy choice is accessible, equitable, and easy choice.
A sustainable healthy lifestyle is ideally obtained by small habit adoption, taking small sequential steps toward healthy behaviors. Plant-predominant nutrition is perhaps the most impactful pillar of lifestyle medicine; however, most people do not need to be completely vegan or vegetarian to see significant benefits from eating more plants at every meal. (See Full Plate Living)
*For a more in-depth understanding of Lifestyle Medicine, download A Family Physician's Introduction to Lifestyle Medicine Supplement, published in the Journal of Family Practice, and the American Academy of Family Physicians’ Lifestyle Medicine Implementation Guide, both offered through AIH funding.
Institute Strategic Priorities
Three focus areas have emerged that build on the AIH Mission and Vision: 1. Lifestyle Medicine (LM), 2. supporting organizations focused on lifestyle improvement in communities and 3. an organizational desire to develop further and share the intellectual property garnered through AIH staff led or grant driven efforts. Informing our approach are clinical and non-clinical undertakings that often intersect. AIH's clinical focus is on the transition of LM from a “movement” to equitable (LM for everyone) systems of care (clinically trained, tested, reimbursed & required). Non-clinical efforts focus on improving health through access to lifestyle improvement opportunities directly and through community influencers.
AIH considers requests for grant funding two times each year (Spring and Fall), only considering requests that align with its strategic and tactical priorities. The plan is a living document and can be found by clicking here: 2030 Strategic Plan and 2026 Objectives & Tactics.
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A few times a year, Ardmore Institute of Health emails updates on lifestyle medicine resources, research, and granting updates. Subscribe below to be on the list.