Thanks to a partnership with the Sheila, Dave, and Sherry Gold Foundation, ACLM’s Thrive LA initiative is expanding access and transforming health through lifestyle medicine at Federally Qualified Health Centers in Los Angeles County.
The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) and the Sheila, Dave, and Sherry Gold Foundation are working together to build a foundation for healthier futures across Los Angeles County. Through ACLM’s Thrive LA program, generously funded by the Gold Foundation, clinicians at community-based Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) are gaining access to no-cost training, certification and other tools to support their patients through lifestyle medicine.
Helping patients address disease root causes
Cesar Barba, MD, associate medical director at Venice Family Clinic in Los Angeles County, is a family physician who has taken advantage of the resources that Thrive LA offers. Through its locations across the county, as well as mobile clinics and a street medicine program that provide services to individuals experiencing homelessness, Venice Family Clinic delivers accessible primary and preventive care and resources to more than 45,000 people in need.
Dr. Barba has spent his career caring for underserved communities. He grew up in a family without health insurance, and his Hispanic heritage taught him about the cultural and healthcare barriers that non-English-speaking patients experience. He’s also seen firsthand how stress can affect health.
“It was a wakeup call to visit my own doctor, where I discovered I was pre-diabetic,” he said. “I was eating in very healthy ways, but the buildup of stress from my profession, a busy practice and keeping up with family and the needs of two young children had taken a toll.”
As an FQHC provider, Dr. Barba sees many patients from complicated or challenging backgrounds, many of whom face toxic stress from family generational trauma, housing or food insecurity, employment and income instability, environmental factors, caregiving responsibilities, and domestic violence. But he wants to do more than prescribe medications. He wants to ask questions, help patients address the root causes of toxic stress that occur outside the clinic, and provide meaningful tools for improving their lives.
Earning a Thrive scholarship
Launched in January 2025, Thrive LA offered 15 scholarships to support board certification in lifestyle medicine for primary care providers, all of which were filled immediately. In addition, hundreds of other lifestyle training and education scholarships were made available to support a shared understanding of the foundations of lifestyle medicine in personal and patient care. These scholarships are intended to support the entire clinic care team including nurses, community health workers, medical assistants, pharmacists, and other essential team members.
A scholarship enabled Dr. Barba to take ACLM online courses and attend ACLM’s annual lifestyle medicine conference at no cost. He also gained access to ACLM’s “Foundations of Lifestyle Medicine Board Review Course” and plans to pursue his lifestyle medicine certification as a next step.
“As I’ve studied lifestyle medicine through these resources, I’ve begun diving deeper with patients into what their daily life looks like, and how environment, choices, behaviors and stress triggers can impact their health,” he said.
ACLM has helped him identify more lifestyle medicine areas to address with patients. Because Venice Family Clinic offers teaching kitchens, connections to food markets, one-on-one and group health education programs, behavioral health services and programs that teach the importance of diet, exercise and sleep, there are numerous resources that patients can access.
“I am using ACLM’s tools to have conversations with patients around what ‘healthy’ looks like,” he said. “You can talk about diet or weight or how blood pressure or insulin works, but only when you reach patients in ways they can understand, in their own terms and language, and often with diagrams and visuals, can you help them fully grasp what’s going on with their health. I’m looking forward to learning and implementing more as I continue toward lifestyle medicine certification.”
A vision for Los Angeles County
In addition to Venice Family Clinic, Los Angeles-area clinicians who earned scholarships provide care at Via Care Community Health Center; Martin Luther King, Jr. Outpatient Center; TCC Family Health and Wellness; To Help Everyone (T.H.E.) Health and Wellness Centers; and Kheir Clinic.
Thrive LA also serves as a bridge between clinicians and community by working in partnership with organizations such as Food Access LA, which connects patients to farmers markets in their areas and supports California small- and mid-sized farms and local small businesses.
“By investing in lifestyle medicine education and resources for clinicians serving underserved populations in Los Angeles County, we have the opportunity to make a transformative impact on both patient health outcomes and clinician well-being,” said ACLM Director of Development and Impact Jenn West, MS, DipACLM, ACSM-EP,. “We are thankful for the Gold Foundation’s support of this initiative.”
Karen Schiffer of the Gold Foundation said, “We are pleased to see the Venice Family Clinic and other Los Angeles-based FQHCs partner with the American College of Lifestyle Medicine to bring accessible everyday lifestyle medicine to the community.”
An investment for life
There are numerous ways to make an impact and partner in lifestyle medicine by supporting Thrive LA and other ACLM programs like it.
“The feedback on Thrive LA has been amazing, as we see clinics adopting what they’ve learned into their patient care plans. Through this initiative, hundreds of providers will gain the skills to transform care and improve outcomes for thousands of patients,” West said.
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