A practicing primary care physician should possess
the following knowledge, skills, attributes and values.

Leadership

• Promote healthy behaviors as foundational to medical care, disease prevention, and health promotion.
• Seek to practice healthy behaviors and create school, work and home environments that support healthy behaviors.

Knowledge

• Demonstrate knowledge of the evidence that specific lifestyle changes can have a positive effect on patients’ health outcomes.
• Describe ways that physician engagement with patients and families can have a positive effect on patients’ health behaviors.

Assessment Skills

• Assess the social, psychological and biological predispositions of patients’ behaviors and the resulting health outcomes.
• Assess patient and family readiness, willingness, and ability to make health behavior changes.
• Perform a history and physical exam specific to lifestyle-related health status, including lifestyle ‘vital signs’ such as tobacco use, alcohol consumption, diet, physical activity, body mass index, stress level, sleep, and emotional well-being, and order and interpret tests to screen, diagnose and monitor lifestyle-related diseases.

Management Skills

• Use nationally recognized practice guidelines (such as those for hypertension and smoking cessation) to assist patients in self-managing their health behaviors and lifestyles.
• Establish effective relationships with patients and families to effect and sustain behavioral change using evidence-based counseling methods and tools and follow up.
• Collaborate with patients and their families to develop evidence-based, achievable, specific, written action plans such as lifestyle prescriptions.
• Help patients manage and sustain healthy lifestyle practices, and refer patients to other health care professionals as needed for lifestyle-related conditions.

Use of Office and Community Support

• Have the ability to practice in an interdisciplinary team of health care providers and support a team approach.
• Develop and apply office systems and practices to support lifestyle medical care including decision support technology.
• Measure processes and outcomes to improve quality of lifestyle interventions in individuals and groups of patients.
• Use appropriate community referral resources that support the implementation of healthy lifestyles.