Intelligence Brief: LM Addressing Health Equity

The Potential of Lifestyle Medicine as a High-Value Approach to Address Health Equity

This paper has been produced in partnership with the Institute for Advancing Health Value.  The Institute wholeheartedly supports the principles of lifestyle medicine as a means to achieving health value.

This new brief is debuting along with a “Race to Value” podcast featuring Keith  Gambrel, whose father’s treatment disparities and death from Covid was the impetus for Oprah Winfrey’s recent “Color of Care” documentary.  The paper – fully available for complimentary download – will 1) evaluate the promise of, and need for, health equity; 2) explain what lifestyle medicine is and why it is high- value care; 3) share how provider organizations can deliver lifestyle medicine both through their own processes and through community partnerships; and 4) present some of the challenges to widespread adoption of lifestyle medicine and how those challenges can be addressed.

Widespread adoption of lifestyle medicine would represent a dramatic shift in how chronic diseases are treated. Rather than focusing on managing the symptoms of the disease, providers and patients would work together to restore health by changing the behaviors that contributed to the disease. This change in paradigm may be exactly what is needed to alleviate the pain and suffering of individuals and achieve health equity.