Latest Lifestyle Medicine Resources Help Members Help Patients

These resources, created by staff and member physicians from three AAFP chapters through a funding opportunity from the Ardmore Institute of Health, are available on the Academy’s new Community Engaged Lifestyle Medicine webpage.

Real Food for Better Health

Kathleen Mueller, M.D., immediate past president of the Connecticut AFP, developed Diets Don’t Work: Real Food for Better Health, a nutrition program focused on easy food preparation techniques and resources through print and online resources, as well as a series of in-person sessions. The sessions are delivered in a group setting so family physicians can work with multiple patients at once.

The curriculum includes sample recipes, information on the benefits of fiber and tips for healthy eating, and links to the MyFitnessPal app and Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4 a Day, a free cookbook that anchors the in-person sessions.

The program’s long-term goal is heathier eating with less highly processed or high-sugar foods, which could reduce chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity and some types of cancer.

Mental Health Screening

The Idaho chapter directed its efforts toward reducing adolescent suicide rates, with an emphasis on caring for Latinx, LGTBQ+ and Native American youth.  Idaho AFP executive director Liz Woodruff, program specialist Brittany Bussey, and a cohort of several family physicians worked with partners across the state to integrate mental health and suicide prevention screenings into members’ regular interactions with patients. The project culminated in two guidebooks: one for patients, the other for clinicians.

Strong and Resilient provides a wealth of resources to help youth and their families prevent or reduce self-harm, including warning signs, coping strategies for stress or anxiety, lifestyle medicine interventions and links to apps and organizations.

Interrupting Teen Suicide at the Gates of Primary Care offers family physicians screening recommendations, safety planning and safety plan templates to share with patients and their loved ones, suicide prevention training opportunities for clinicians and office staff, links to patient education resources and an overview of lifestyle medicine.

Lifestyle Medicine and Diabetes Care

The Illinois chapter addressed lifestyle medicine through a series of CME sessions featuring Illinois AFP member Christina Wells, M.D., M.B.A., M.P.H., Dip. ABLM; subject matter expert Meagan Grega, M.D., FACLM, Dip. ABFM, Dip. ABLM; and Kate Valentine, vice president of education and meetings.

The first two, "Cultivating Resilience: Why Lifestyle Is the Best Medicine” and “Integrating Lifestyle Medicine Into Clinical Practice,” help clinicians better understand the evidence behind six pillars of lifestyle medicine (physical activity; a whole-food, nutrition-dense dietary pattern; restorative sleep; stress management; supportive social connections; and avoidance of risky substances) and examine assessment tools and interventions that can be part of a personalized approach to patient care.

The third session, “Lifestyle Medicine Approaches for the Prevention and Management of Diabetes,” is based on the Diabetes Undone curriculum.

The Illinois AFP is also developing more resources for the Community Engaged Lifestyle Medicine webpage.

More From the Academy

The new resources from these chapters are part of an ongoing AAFP effort to provide members with the latest lifestyle medicine tools and information.

In addition to the new Community Engaged Lifestyle Medicine webpage, the webpage on healthy lifestyle has been repurposed to emphasize lifestyle medicine by making connections to mental health and well-being, obesity and physical activity, and oral health. The webpage also features a lifestyle medicine assessment tool, a practice assessment guide and other resources from the Ardmore Institute.

Current AAFP CME activities on lifestyle medicine include an introductory free CME session and accompanying lifestyle medicine implementation guide, a comprehensive on-demand CME course worth up to 11.25 credits and an upcoming live course in March.

Family physicians also have access to materials on exercise and fitness, food and nutrition, and staying healthy on the Academy’s website for patients, familydoctor.org.