Advocacy Committee

The advocacy committee is responsible for coordinating the efforts of the SMHP to effect change. This is a collaborative effort of the SMHP and the Nutrition Coalition to focus not only on the changes needed in the US Dietary Guidelines for Americans, but reforms that are needed in other policies and programs elsewhere as well. Through our coordinated efforts, we hope to introduce projects and campaigns to help change many sectors of our community, like schools, hospitals, food allowance programs, and so much more.

Matt Calkins Square

Matthew Calkins, MD

Committee Chair

Dr. Matt Calkins is a second-year family medicine resident at Wake Forest in Winston Salem, North Carolina. He graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in physics from the University of Florida. He subsequently matriculated and graduated from the University of Florida College of Medicine. He is working towards his SMHP accreditation and plans on being board certified in Obesity Medicine soon after finishing training.

Matt's passion is centered on improving health and performance.  His initial interest in optimizing performance came from competing in weightlifting competitions and long-distance hiking, including a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail in 2014. He has a particular interest in the processes around making changes accessible to his patients – including improving communication and education between clinicians and patients.

As the Chair of the Resources Committee for the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners, Matt's role is to curate resources on nutrition and metabolic health, and then work with medical students, residencies, and clinicians to integrate them into their educational programs and daily practices.

Laura Buchanan, MD

Dr. Laura Buchanan is a third-year family medicine resident at Wake Forest. She graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Sciences from the University of South Florida and was a valedictorian of her class at the University of Florida College of Medicine.

The mission that drives her is to help people age successfully. She has been passionate about fitness and health since she was a young child. That passion was initially derived from a love of sports but has since evolved and expanded to include a passion for healthy living generally, including the importance of nutrition, exercise, mental wellness, and an optimal use of the medical system. She sees her role as a doctor being two-fold: promoting prevention and practicing medicine.

Since entering the field of medicine Laura has been interested in the intersections of longevity, metabolic health, lifestyle changes and chronic disease. She spends her free time taking deep dives into the latest research around diet, sleep and other factors that may impact metabolic health.

Laura is a certified metabolic health practitioner (MHP) and a founding member of the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners. She is a member of the Obesity Medicine Association and will be taking her board examination in the fall of 2022. She is also a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians, AOA and the Gold Humanism Society.

Laura Buchanan, MD, MHP

Doug Reynolds, BSc (Elec Eng), MHP

Doug Reynolds is the Founder and CEO of LowCarbUSA®.  The original organization was founded in the beginning of 2016 with the initial  intention of providing  a platform, through an annual conference, for internationally renowned scientists and medical practitioners to present the ever-increasing body of evidence on the benefits of reducing carbohydrates in the diet (and adding in healthy fats).  He felt that education about the power of the low carb/ketogenic diet for the individual who may not get the information from their medical team or from mainstream nutrition advice, and for practitioners who may then be able to prescribe it in their practice was critical.

However, his mission quickly evolved when he realized how important this was to the medical professional community.  Valuable tools are needed, not only to provide hope to their patients to reverse and prevent disease but restore hope to that very practitioner. This is why they went to medical school and got professional training, to help people heal and not just put Band-Aids on and never address the root cause of the problem.  Too many practitioners are being taught that the many chronic diseases our communities are facing are just chronic and progressive.  With effective tools and supportive information, complications can be stopped in their tracks and further complications reduced and the disease process may even be reversed.

The tools and resources Low Carb USA has been providing,  not only includes the live conferences, but also  includes a huge library of educational videos, a growing database of practitioners, and nutritionists and sports trainers who are open to  the carb restriction conversation as well as a searchable database for papers and articles covering the research into the evidence supporting this lifestyle.

Most importantly, though, he has coordinated the establishment of a panel of advisors to oversee the creation and maintenance of a set of 'Clinical Guidelines for Therapeutic Carbohydrate Restriction' which was first published in May, 2019.

He has worked tirelessly over this period during the COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown to now establish this nonprofit, the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners, and this organization will now house most of the above body of work as education and training of Metabolic Health Practitioners and the entire community interested in making a difference in worldwide metabolic health.  The aim is to stall and reverse the increasing prevalence of noncommunicable, lifestyle related diseases, influenced by metabolic dysfunction and insulin resistance.  Accreditation pathways have even been established for practitioners within this society to introduce credibility to the practice of therapeutic carbohydrate restriction and to help establish alternative Standard of Care for those whose metabolisms are different because they don’t eat excessive carbohydrates.

Doug Reynolds, MHP

Additional Members