In Underserved Communities
Lifestyle Medicine Interventions in Underserved Communities Continue to Improve Health Outcomes
Innovative approaches and strategic collaborations with community resources increase access to lifestyle medicine solutions for patient populations at a higher risk for lifestyle-related chronic disease.
ACLM handout using community-engaged approaches and collaborations to address health disparities and improve outcomes for underserved populations affected by lifestyle-related chronic diseases.
Join us as we explore how innovative connections between the community and healthcare professionals can transform health where people live, learn, work, play, and pray!
As the first in a 3-part series, this session will focus on the power of connecting patients with fresh produce. Our panel will discuss innovative models that delve slightly beyond the six pillars of lifestyle medicine, including a plant-predominate diet, to advance health equity within communities disproportionately burdened by lifestyle-related chronic diseases.
Lifestyle medicine, a medical specialty that uses therapeutic lifestyle interventions as a primary modality to treat chronic conditions, is for all people no matter their background or zip code. Underserved communities and individuals living in low-income and rural neighborhoods are at a higher risk for lifestyle-related chronic diseases but social drivers of health (SDoH) place challenging limitations on their ability to access lifestyle medicine interventions. While SDoH factors fundamentally impede on some patients’ ability to access evidence-based lifestyle medicine treatment, the unfortunate assumption is lifestyle medicine is only for the wealthy.
This webinar, in partnership with the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, will dispel the myth that lifestyle medicine is only for affluent groups and underscore solid examples of lifestyle medicine interventions in health care and other innovative settings that are getting to the root cause of chronic disease and changing health outcomes for historically medically underserved groups.
American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) and the Association of Clinicians for the Underserved (ACU) forged a partnership to help equip hundreds of thousands of medical professionals with education and training to further their practice and better treat chronic disease among historically medically underserved patients. Part one of “The Power of Partnership” webinar series is the first collaborative effort hosted by both ACLM and ACU to create shared learning around health equity through the lens of the clinical application of lifestyle medicine, which, according to studies, is proven to address clinician burnout. In addition, the webinar will cover two unique scholarship opportunities that were designed to diversify the medical workforce and train and certify health center physicians in lifestyle medicine.
Eating Healthy on a Budget Handout
Blogs
Despite the challenges and limitations that exist, ACLM and our
dedicated members strive to support patients no matter what their
barriers may be. We highlight four of the many solid examples and
implementation models that showcase success in the area of lifestyle medicine intervention in high-need patient populations. While we are not experts on mitigating the impacts of SDoH, we support our
members in finding solutions to these challenges through our HEAL
Initiative and its companion scholarship program, and other strategic partnerships with organizations aligned with our health equity efforts. To learn more about community engaged lifestyle medicine examples improving health outcomes of historically medically underserved patients, visit lifestylemedicine.org/heal-initiative.