Ed Stephens

About Ed Stephens

As Co-Founder & COO of WelFore Health, I help turn bold ideas into scalable, sustainable impact. My focus is building operational pathways that transform food-as-medicine from vision into daily reality for families and communities. At WelFore, we’ve created the FlavURWay™ Food-As-Medicine Wellness System — a flavor-first, AI-enabled, culturally fluent platform that engages people through joy, identity, and real-world behavior. Backed by four clinical trials and trusted by families, our system proves that prevention works best when it tastes like home. My work bridges strategy, operations, and partnerships — ensuring our model integrates with FQHCs, payers, and employers while delivering measurable ROI in cost, outcomes, and engagement. Over the past 15 years, we have learned that \"Reducing excess weight is tough, AND Preventing weight regain is even tougher. Our Nutrition Recommendation Engine will generate healthy hyper-personalized meal plans, recipes, cooking videos to prep, plate, and enjoy delicious food in precise portions, reducing their risk for developing diet related diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, & certain cancers. Currently, we have been awarded research grants from the ADA, & the Hampton Road Biomedical Research Consortium while partnering with EVMS. We are committed to partnering with RDs, CDEs, nutrition educators, & health care providers to create, customize, and share easy to use Nutrition Guidance Systems that improve the quality of life of families. Let\'s collaborate to help break the cycle of intergenerational diet-related diseases in multicultural communities. Food Is Medicine.Let\'s Make It Taste Good! & don\'t overdose. Please visit: and to review our comprehensive line of Flavor-Full Salt-Free Spice Blends, Nutrition Guiding Portion Tools & More.

Experience

1. Co-founder COO

   Welfore Health

   Nov 2021 — Present · Norfolk, VA, US

   WelFore Health was created to help break the cycle of intergenerational diet related diseases, like type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular, & certain cancers - without sacrificing ethnic foods, flavors, or fun.We help improve family member\'s quality of life and reduce healthcare costs by promoting long term lifestyle change by creating our Hybrid Nutrition Guidance System.We will achieve our mission by combine our: a. Ai-powered nutrition recommendation engine (AskPortia.ai) b. Portion guidance dining ware, & salt-free spice blends and flavor infused extra virgin olive oils (PrecisePortions.com).We look forward to participate in multiple clinical trials to generate evidence based data to train and improve the accuracy of AskPortia our nutrition recommendation engine.Let\'s form synergistic partnerships in this endeavor to improve the quality of life, and reduce crushing healthcare cost.

Education

• City University of New York-Hunter College

  Pre-Engineering

  1975 — 1977

• The City College of New York

  Bachelor of Eng

  1977 — 1980

• Columbus College of Art & Design

  Industrial Design

  1970 — 1972

Skills

• Healthcare
• Team Building
• Chronic Illness
• Publisher
• Nutrition
• Photoshop
• Weight Management
• Newsletters
• Prevention
• Diabetes
• Start-Ups
• Product Development
• Nutrition Education
• Food
• Entrepreneurship
• Microsoft Office