This year’s scholarship recipients come from 11 states and represent residency specialties that include family medicine, internal medicine, sports medicine, preventive medicine, pediatric medicine and physical medicine and rehabilitation. The award includes complimentary ACLM membership for one year, attendance to Lifestyle Medicine 2023, ACLM’s annual conference being held Oct. 29 to Nov.1, enrollment in the Foundations of Lifestyle Medicine Board Review, 4th Edition, and ABLM exam registration.
There is a growing urgency to fill the gaping void of lifestyle medicine training across the medical education continuum amid a pandemic of lifestyle-related chronic diseases. Six in 10 U.S. adults have been diagnosed with at least one chronic disease, and four in 10 have been diagnosed with at least two. The Wall Street Journal in April highlighted the increasing number of medical schools integrating principles of lifestyle medicine into curricula as part of its “The Future of Everything” series.
“Awareness is growing that if we are to truly alter the trajectory of chronic disease, physicians must enter the workforce with the knowledge and training to treat the root causes of their patient’s illness effectively, and those root causes are overwhelmingly unhealthy lifestyle behaviors,” said Brenda Rea, MD, DrPH, PT, RD, DipABLM, FACLM, LM Intensivist and program director of the Loma Linda University Health Lifestyle Medicine Intensivist Fellowship. “Residency programs that adopt the Lifestyle Medicine Residency Curriculum will become increasingly sought after as more medical schools incorporate lifestyle medicine into their curricula and graduating students look to grow their knowledge and skills in residency.
“I commend the 2023 scholarship recipients for leading the integration of lifestyle medicine into the residency programs they represent.”
The scholarships were created in 2021 by ACLM through a generous gift from Stephen Turner, MD, DipABLM, a longtime Mayo Clinic nephrologist who was in the inaugural 2017 cohort to become certified as a lifestyle medicine physician. Dr. Turner said he came to believe that “lifestyle medicine is the most positive thing happening in the medical space” and wanted to ensure that more young doctors are exposed to the rapidly growing medical specialty.
Lifestyle medicine uses therapeutic lifestyle interventions as a primary modality to treat chronic conditions including, but not limited to, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. Applying the six pillars of lifestyle medicine—a whole-food, plant-predominant eating pattern, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances and positive social connections—also provides effective prevention for these conditions.
Since the LMRC was piloted in 2018, it has expanded to more than 300 lifestyle medicine residency and fellowship programs nationally, with more than 6,800 enrollees. A 2023 scholarship recipient, Puja Gandhi, MD, MPH, clinical instructor in the Department of Internal Medicine at UTHealth Houston McGovern Medical School, said she applied for the award because she believes that lifestyle medicine is the foundation of primary care and to not incorporate evidence-based lifestyle-focused conversations and interventions into care was a disservice to patients.
“The Lifestyle Medicine Residency Curriculum will allow for the standardization of lifestyle medicine primary principles and, ultimately, equip future physicians with the knowledge and skills needed to address the complex interplay between lifestyle and health, leading to better patient care and outcomes,” Dr. Gandhi said. “Lifestyle medicine is more vital than ever to our future of medicine. Our current health care system focuses more on treating than preventing and there is no end in sight of the rising prevalence of chronic diseases.
“Lifestyle medicine gives us that unique opportunity to strive for not only improvement and reversal of diseases, but also optimal whole-person health,” she said.
2023 Dr. Stephen Turner Residency Director & Faculty Scholarships Recipients
Karina Atwell, MD, MPH
University of Wisconsin Department of Family Medicine and Community Health
Francesca Cimino, MD, MHPE
Fort Belvoir Community Hospital
Ryan Draper, DO
Cone Health Sports Medicine
Jessica Engle, DO
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Edwin Farnell, MD
Dwight D. Eisenhower Army Medical Center
Puja Gandhi, MD, MPH
UTHealth Houston McGovern Medical School
Kathleen Head, MD, MS, MPH
Medical University of South Carolina
Marissa Khajavi, MD, MPH
University of Maryland Medical Center
Cecilia Kipnis, MD
Naval Hospital Jacksonville
Stephanie LaFave, MD
Valley Health/Virginia Commonwealth University
Melissa Martin, MD
Texas Institute for Graduate Medical Education and Research
Laura Preece, DO, FACOI, FACP
MountainView Regional Medical Center
Richard Sundermeyer, MD
HealthONE
Nathan Wood, MD
Yale School of Medicine
ABOUT ACLM
The American College of Lifestyle Medicine is the nation’s medical professional society advancing lifestyle medicine as the foundation for a redesigned, value-based and equitable healthcare delivery system, leading to whole person health. ACLM educates, equips, empowers and supports its members through quality, evidence-based education, certification and research to identify and eradicate the root cause of chronic disease, with a clinical outcome goal of health restoration as opposed to disease management. http://www.lifestylemedicine.org
Media Contact
Alex Branch, American College of Lifestyle Medicine, 19719835383, [email protected], https://lifestylemedicine.org/
SOURCE American College of Lifestyle Medicine
