(Press-News.org) Expanding access to lifestyle medicine education opportunities—such as continuing medical education (CME) courses, professional certification, webinars, mentoring and peer-to-peer connections, and conference participation—can facilitate the adoption of the medical specialty across health systems, according to a new study published in Translational Behavioral Medicine.
This qualitative study conducted by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) found that intentional educational strategies are critical to the adoption and growth of lifestyle medicine programming and facilitate deepening of clinicians’ knowledge, skills, and confidence in delivering lifestyle medicine interventions to treat, reverse and prevent chronic disease.
“These findings give health system leaders a roadmap of educational strategies to advance lifestyle medicine implementation,” said ACLM Senior Director of Research Micaela Karlsen, PhD. “By investing in CME courses and conferences or creating space for informal activities like wellness programs and peer support, leaders have powerful levers that drive adoption and sustain long-term growth.”
About the study
To understand how health systems prepare clinicians to practice lifestyle medicine, researchers conducted more than 60 interviews with clinicians, administrators and educators at eight health systems. Seven of these health systems are part of ACLM’s Health System Council—a collaborative network dedicated to accelerating clinical integration of the specialty.
Strategies for success
Interviewees identified several educational strategies that supported lifestyle medicine practice, including:
Lifestyle medicine and food as medicine CME courses and webinars
Lifestyle medicine certification
Grand rounds and in-house trainings
Attendance at ACLM’s annual conference
Peer-learning and mentoring
Interviewees described how educational initiatives translated into cultural and practice shifts within their organizations, also leading to mentoring and further peer support. The role of cultural support had been further explored in a previous ACLM study. One physician in the new study responded that after they earned lifestyle medicine certification, they “helped 15 other people, a few physicians and nurse practitioners” get board certified.” At least two health systems established resources to support employees to achieve certification.
Six health systems described leveraging lifestyle medicine and food as medicine conference attendance to support clinician education. Interviewees noted that the experience not only instilled a passion for lifestyle medicine but also inspired them to disseminate knowledge and insights within their organizations.
The study highlighted the benefit of embedding lifestyle medicine into employee wellness initiatives. These initiatives gave clinicians firsthand experience with the same lifestyle interventions recommended for patients, reinforcing both their confidence and credibility when delivering lifestyle medicine care. While pilot programs have long been recognized as an approach to test the feasibility of an intervention, the study’s first author Meghan Ames, DrPH, MSPH, RDN, said “This work highlights that delivering lifestyle medicine to health system employees can serve as a rich opportunity for healthcare professionals to learn firsthand what lifestyle medicine is and how powerful it can be to impact health.”
Key educational content areas
The study also pinpointed key educational content areas considered most critical: a clear definition and evidence base for lifestyle medicine, behavior change counseling, familiarity with lifestyle medicine referral opportunities and business operation skills.
Many of the strategies interviewees described focused on raising awareness of the lifestyle medicine resources available both inside and outside their health systems. This awareness was seen as critical for making patient referrals and ensuring consistent use of lifestyle medicine services. As one physician explained, “It’s also important that the people you work with know about what existing resources are,” adding that education must be continuous because “you’ll always have new staff or new physicians joining.”
About ACLM®
The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) is the nation’s medical professional society advancing the field of lifestyle medicine as the foundation of a redesigned, value-based and equitable healthcare delivery system, essential to achieving the Quintuple Aim and whole-person health. ACLM represents, advocates for, trains, certifies, and equips its members to identify and eradicate the root cause of chronic disease by optimizing modifiable risk factors. ACLM is filling the gaping void of lifestyle medicine in medical education, providing more than 1.2 million hours of lifestyle medicine education to physicians and other health professionals since 2004, while also advancing research, clinical practice and reimbursement strategies.
END
New research identifies educational strategies that fuel lifestyle medicine adoption across health systems
The study highlights CME, certification, and conference participation as drivers of lifestyle medicine implementation and provides a roadmap for health system leaders to propel the integration of lifestyle medicine into clinical care.
2025-09-23
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Provider misperceptions, not knowledge or profit, drive inappropriate antibiotic overprescribing for child diarrhea in India
2025-09-23
Durham, NC — 23 September 2025 — Researchers from USC and Duke report that the persistent “know-do gap” — where clinicians know guidelines but practice differently — is the primary driver of antibiotic overprescribing for pediatric diarrhea in India’s private sector, not lack of knowledge, point-of-sale profits, or stockouts of clinically recommended treatments such as oral rehydration salts (ORS).
In a sample of 2,282 private providers across 253 towns, 70 percent prescribed antibiotics without signs of bacterial infection, and among those who knew antibiotics ...
Biophysical Society announces 2026 Society Fellows
2025-09-23
BETHESDA, MD – The Biophysical Society is proud to announce its 2026 Society Fellows. This award honors the Society’s distinguished members who have demonstrated excellence in science and contributed to the expansion of the field of biophysics. The Fellows will be honored at the Biophysical Society’s 70th Annual Meeting, being held in San Francisco, California from February 21-25, 2026. The 2026 Fellows are:
Kenneth J. Breslauer, Linus Pauling Distinguished Professor, Rutgers, The State ...
Yiechang Lin and Kai Sheng to receive 2026 Outstanding Doctoral Research in Biophysics Award
2025-09-23
BETHESDA, MD – The Biophysical Society is pleased to announce that Yiechang Lin, of Australian National University, Australia and Kai Sheng, of Scripps Research, USA, have been named recipients of the 2026 Outstanding Doctoral Research in Biophysics Award. Lin and Sheng will be honored at the Society’s 70th Annual Meeting, being held in San Francisco, California from February 21-25, 2026.
Lin will be recognized for advancing our understanding of how lipid-protein interactions affect function and Sheng will be recognized for pioneering new approaches to elucidate the mechanism of bacterial ribosome ...
Hawa Racine Thiam to receive the 2026 Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award
2025-09-23
BETHESDA, MD – The Biophysical Society is pleased to announce that Hawa Racine Thiam, of Stanford University, USA, will receive the 2026 Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award. Thiam will be honored at the Society’s 70th Annual Meeting, being held in San Francisco, California from February 21-25, 2026.
Thiam is being recognized for being a trailblazer of subcellular biophysics and unveiling new paradigms of biophysical immunology through her dynamic measurements of physical forces on organelles in real time.
“I am delighted that Hawa Racine’s name will be added to the list of remarkable women in biophysics,” said BPS President ...
Ken A. Dill to receive Biophysical Society’s 2026 Founders Award
2025-09-23
BETHESDA, MD – The Biophysical Society is pleased to announce that Ken A. Dill, of Stony Brook University, USA, will receive the Society’s 2026 Founders Award. Dill will be honored at the Society’s 70th Annual Meeting, being held in San Francisco, California from February 21-25, 2026.
Dill is being honored for his work on the protein folding problem and the development of statistical mechanical theories and foundational principles in biophysics.
“I am honored to recognize Ken with ...
Ashley R. Carter to receive 2026 PUI Faculty Award
2025-09-23
BETHESDA, MD – The Biophysical Society is pleased to announce that Ashley R. Carter, of Amherst College, USA, has been named the recipient of the 2026 PUI Faculty Award. Carter will be honored at the Society’s 70th Annual Meeting, being held in San Francisco, California from February 21-25, 2026.
Carter will be recognized for her remarkable contributions to biophysics research, mentoring of undergraduate students, and leadership in guiding the next generation of scientists to advance the field of biophysics.
“Ashley has clearly demonstrated excellence in undergraduate research ...
Air pollution and childhood myopia
2025-09-23
Myopia, or short-sightedness, is on the rise worldwide and has become a major public health issue—especially in East Asia, where large numbers of school-aged children are affected. Traditionally, factors such as family history, intensive reading, heavy screen use, and limited time spent outdoors have been seen as the main causes. Hua Yan and colleagues suggests another possible cause: poor air quality. The authors studied nearly 30,000 children in Tianjin, China, using explainable automated machine learning tools ...
Wiener studying perception of time & memorability in the visual hierarchy
2025-09-23
Martin Wiener, Associate Professor, Psychology, College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS), received funding for the study: “CRCNS US-Israel Research Proposal: NSF-BSF: The Perception of Time and Memorability in the Visual Hierarchy.”
Dr. Wiener is collaborating with Ayelet Landau, Associate Professor, Cognitive Science and Psychology, Hebrew University, and Yuval Benjamini, Associate Professor, Statistics and Data Science, Hebrew University.
Dr. Wiener will conduct research at George Mason in consultation with the co-principal investigators, who will be conducting their own ...
Wijesekera receives funding for operational technology digital twin & scanning support
2025-09-23
Duminda Wijesekera, Professor, Cyber Security Engineering, College of Engineering and Computing (CEC), received funding for: “Operational Technology Digital Twin and Scanning Support.”
He will develop two simultaneous strands of work, that will be merged at the end:
Conduct LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) mapping of a Steel Plant and specifically high-temperate Infrared ovens used for powder-coating on steel sheets that pass through the mill at high speed; and
Develop a digital twin of the factory.
Additionally, he will coordinate with Datalytica’s modeling team to optimize camera placement ...
Researchers find “protective switches” that may make damaged livers suitable for transplantation
2025-09-23
In a mouse model of liver transplantation, UCLA researchers have identified proteins that act as “protective switches” guarding the liver against damage occurring when blood supply is restored during transplantation, a process known as ischemia-reperfusion injury.
The finding could increase the supply of donor organs by using molecular therapies to strengthen the liver’s protective pathways. By boosting this protection, organs that would otherwise be discarded as damaged or suboptimal could be made suitable for transplantation and added to the donor pool, said Kenneth J. Dery, Ph.D, an associate adjunct professor of surgery in the division of liver and pancreas ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
When tropical oceans were oxygen oases
Positive interactions dominate among marine microbes, six-year study reveals
Safeguarding the Winter Olympics-Paralympics against climate change
Most would recommend RSV immunizations for older and pregnant people
Donated blood has a shelf life. A new test tracks how it's aging
Stroke during pregnancy, postpartum associated with more illness, job status later
American Meteorological Society announces new executive director
People with “binge-watching addiction” are more likely to be lonely
Wild potato follows a path to domestication in the American Southwest
General climate advocacy ad campaign received more public engagement compared to more-tailored ad campaign promoting sustainable fashion
Medical LLMs may show real-world potential in identifying individuals with major depressive disorder using WhatsApp voice note recordings
Early translational study supports the role of high-dose inhaled nitric oxide as a potential antimicrobial therapy
AI can predict preemies’ path, Stanford Medicine-led study shows
A wild potato that changed the story of agriculture in the American Southwest
Cancer’s super-enhancers may set the map for DNA breaks and repair: A key clue to why tumors become aggressive and genetically unstable
Prehistoric tool made from elephant bone is the oldest discovered in Europe
Mineralized dental plaque from the Iron Age provides insight into the diet of the Scythians
Salty facts: takeaways have more salt than labels claim
When scientists build nanoscale architecture to solve textile and pharmaceutical industry challenges
Massive cloud with metallic winds discovered orbiting mystery object
Old diseases return as settlement pushes into the Amazon rainforest
Takeaways are used to reward and console – study
Velocity gradients key to explaining large-scale magnetic field structure
Bird retinas function without oxygen – solving a centuries-old biological mystery
Pregnancy- and abortion-related mortality in the US, 2018-2021
Global burden of violence against transgender and gender-diverse adults
Generative AI use and depressive symptoms among US adults
Antibiotic therapy for uncomplicated acute appendicitis
Childhood ADHD linked to midlife physical health problems
Patients struggle to measure blood pressure at home
[Press-News.org] New research identifies educational strategies that fuel lifestyle medicine adoption across health systemsThe study highlights CME, certification, and conference participation as drivers of lifestyle medicine implementation and provides a roadmap for health system leaders to propel the integration of lifestyle medicine into clinical care.