Students Teaching Students: Bringing Lifestyle Medicine Education to Middle and High Schools Through Student-Led Community Outreach Programs (original) (raw)
Related papers
American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 2019
Chronic diseases, previously thought to require decades of risk factors, have become increasingly prevalent in America’s youth. National Health Education Standards have been published since 1995, and yet nearly a fifth of schools fail to follow any state or national health education guidelines. Utilizing the phrase “lifestyle medicine” in childhood would elevate the importance and standardization of the core health guidelines. Several independent pilot programs taught by undergraduate and medical student volunteers have successfully demonstrated lifestyle medicine education models at intermediate and secondary schools. Preliminary feedback demonstrates that student interest in and consideration of behavioral change is possible within this age group. As with any life stage, significant behavior change in youth requires strategic planning of authentic learning practices and culturally competent lessons. We argue for the interdisciplinary development and implementation of community-eng...
Israel journal of health policy research, 2017
By 2020, the World Health Organization predicts that two-thirds of all diseases worldwide will be the result of lifestyle choices. Physicians often do not counsel patients about healthy behaviors, and lack of training has been identified as one of the barriers. Between 2010 and 2014, Hebrew University developed and implemented a 58-h Lifestyle Medicine curriculum spanning five of the 6 years of medical school. Content includes nutrition, exercise, smoking cessation, and behavior change, as well as health coaching practice with friends/relatives (preclinical years) and patients (clinical years). This report describes this development and diffusion process, and it also presents findings related to the level of acceptance of this student-initiated Lifestyle Medicine (LM) curriculum. Students completed an online semi-structured questionnaire after the first coaching session (coaching questionnaire) and the last coaching session (follow-up questionnaire). Nine hundred and twenty-three st...
Leading Healthy Lives: Lifestyle Medicine for Medical Students
American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 2017
Background. Doctors have a special role in helping patients make lifestyle changes, and they are more credible and effective if they are role models. Yet few medical schools have incorporated lifestyle medicine into their curricula. We ascertained the influence of a lifestyle medicine curriculum during the first year of medical school. Methods. The curriculum, involving 140 students, consisted of one intensive day at medical school entry and 16 hours of teaching 8 months later. It addressed students’ own lifestyle choices and topics related to lifestyle medicine. A survey was delivered at the beginning and end of the academic year. Results. A total of 114 students completed the first survey and 64 the second. They rated the course highly for personal and professional value. At baseline, students exhibited lifestyle behaviors typical for young adults and showed an appreciation of the physician’s role in lifestyle change. However, over time they showed a significant reduction in quali...
Lifestyle Medicine in Medical Education: Maximizing Impact
Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Innovations, Quality, and Outcomes, 2024
The relationship between lifestyle behaviors and common chronic conditions is well established. Lifestyle medicine (LM) interventions to modify health behaviors can dramatically improve the health of individuals and populations. There is an urgent need to meaningfully integrate LM into medical curricula horizontally across the medical domains and vertically in each year of school and training. Including LM content in medical and health professional curricula and training programs has been challenging. Barriers to LM integration include lack of awareness and prioritization of LM, limited time in the curricula, and too few LM-trained faculty to teach and role model the practice of LM. This limits the ability of health care professionals to provide effective LM and precludes the wide-reaching benefits of LM from being fully realized. Early innovators developed novel tools and resources aligned with current evidence for introducing LM into didactic and experiential learning. This review aimed to examine the educational efforts in each LM pillar for undergraduate and graduate medical education. A PubMed-based literature review was undertaken using the following search terms: lifestyle medicine, education, medical school, residency, and healthcare professionals. We map the LM competencies to the core competency domains of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. We highlight opportunities to train faculty, residents, and students. Moreover, we identify available evidence-based resources. This article serves as a "call to action" to incorporate LM across the spectrum of medical education curricula and training.
Enhancing Students’ Learning about Healthy Living through Community Participation
Open Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2014
Introduction: The Health Enhancement Module (HEM) is taught as a core curriculum for all medical students at Monash University since 2002. In 2012 we moved the year three content of the program into a community setting, calling it the Health Enhancement Carnival (HEC). At the carnival, our undergraduates interacted with school students, their teachers, and their parents, involving them in a mix of discussions, poster presentations, and video presentations. In this paper we present our experience with the HEC. Specifically, we looked at the following two measures: how did the HEC influence the knowledge, attitude, and practice of healthy living among medical students? And, what were the learning experiences of the students during the HEC? Methods: Five themes (exercise, food, healthy sleep, workplace stress and ageing) were divided among students. They were asked to develop those themes with the help of posters, power point presentations, community talks as well as video presentations. The carnival was held in the setting of two nearby children's schools. Students were evaluated by a panel of examiners with regards to learning objectives as well as preparation and presentation. As part of evaluation, we developed 2 questionnaires. The HEP Healthy Living Questionnaire provided feedback on how the program had improved students' knowledge, attitudes, and practice of healthy living. The HEP Learning Style Questionnaire covered twelve areas, including collegiality, environment, leadership, community interaction and other facets of learning style. Analyses were performed using the IBM SPSS Statistics version 20 software in the Clinical School Johor Bahru. Results: 1) Influence of HEC on the knowledge, attitude, and practice of healthy living among medical students. From the interviews, the judges gave the students mean ratings of 4.0/5. We also received 77 out of 127 feedback questionnaires (response rate: 60.6%) from the students. Most students (range: 49.35% to 55.84%) were "satisfied/totally satisfied", "achieved/totally achieved", or "improved/totally improved" to 5 questions of the Healthy Living Questionnaire. Correlation coefficients between knowledge of healthy living, attitude towards healthy living, and practice of healthy living were large (exceeding 0.8) suggesting that these three measures were highly and positively inter-correlated. Most students (range: 60.28% to 71.43%) scored "a lot/almost all", to 5 questions regarding achievement A. Gandhi et al. 772 of learning objectives. 2) Learning experiences of the students during the HEC. Responding to the HEP Learning Style Questionnaire, most students (range: 66.24% to 85.72%) agreed or strongly agreed that the program provided an optimal environment for learning, encouraging students to assume leadership responsibilities and promoting self-directed learning. A correlation matrix of the 12 items showed medium to large correlations between all twelve variables. Conclusions: The Health Enhancement Program (HEP) is an innovative approach that has enabled students to learn about healthy living within the context of the local community.
Medical Teacher, 2008
Background: Lifestyle factors are major determinants for health and safety. Although many graduates lack interviewing and observational skills for prevention and student lifestyle often deteriorates during training, few medical schools teach comprehensive assessment of lifestyle, particularly in the context of the home environment. Aims: A lifestyle curriculum was developed to teach basic causality and provide practical experience in assessing nutrition, exercise, safety, tobacco addiction, and food hygiene, together with generic skills in history taking, on-site observation, researching and presenting. Methods: Lifestyle has been integrated into the first-year curriculum, evaluated, and improved at the United Arab Emirates University since 2001. After an introduction to determinants of health, students conduct a home interview and observational survey for family residential and traffic safety, smoking, and food hygiene. For nutrition and exercise, students assess personal lifestyle. Generic skills are developed in the context of lifestyle. Evaluations were by faculty and students, including assessed impact on knowledge, skills, and personal lifestyle. The lifestyle curriculum was compared with other countries by detailed search. Results: Detailed evaluation found strong agreement/agreement among students that knowledge had improved on: counselling of patients and families 97%, promoting healthy lifestyles 100%; interviewing 88%; history taking 84%; using research for medical practice 89%; and importance of prevention 96%. Eighty six percent were stimulated to think in new ways about health. Improved personal diet was reported by 60% (p < 0.0004) and exercise by 55% (p < 0.0004), while 36% of non-users started wearing a safety belt in front (p < 0.0004) and 20% in the rear (p ¼ 0.008). Literature review found comprehensive lifestyle curricula to be rare. Conclusions: A lifestyle curriculum developed prevention-oriented history-taking and observation skills for health maintenance, addressing health priorities, improving medical student lifestyle, and strengthening generic skills. Since lifestyle is a major determinant of health, medical schools should consider development of an appropriate curriculum to address their local and national health priorities.
Effects of a Lifestyle Medicine Elective on Self-Care Behaviors in Preclinical Medical Students
Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, 2019
The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of a lifestyle medicine elective on medical students' self-care behaviors. From fall, 2015, through spring, 2017, a lifestyle medicine elective was offered to first and second year medical students. Acquisition of data was approved by the IRB. Students attended four group sessions, two at the beginning and two at the end of the elective. At the first session, information about the effects of lifestyle on mental and physical health was presented. Students completed screening instruments to assess their own physical activity, nutrition, anxiety, and depression. At the next class, students received their scores. They chose one of three focus groups: nutrition, physical activity or stress management and set a specific goal in that area. At the end of the elective, students attended two group sessions, which focused on patient cases. They again completed the screening instruments, and received their scores. They also evaluated the course. Sixty-three students signed the consent form and provided data. Comparison of baseline scores by gender revealed that women had statistically significant higher scores on the depression screener than men, and lower physical activity scores than men. Pre and post elective comparison in the whole group showed statistically significant improvements in nutrition, depression, and anxiety (all p < .05). Further analysis in the focus groups demonstrated that the stress management group's scores on anxiety were significantly improved. The nutrition group significantly lowered their fat consumption and increased their intake of fruits and vegetables (all p < .05). The physical activity group did not significantly increase their daily physical activity, although this analysis was limited by missing data and wide variability. Student evaluations of the course were positive. Medical students are able to make improvements in their own lifestyle behaviors while acquiring information that may be useful in later patient care.
A parallel curriculum in lifestyle medicine
Less than 50 per cent of US primary care doctors routinely provide guid- ance to their patients on lifestyle behaviours such as diet, physical activity or weight control, despite the prediction by the World Health Organization that by 2020, two-thirds of disease worldwide will be the result of poor lifestyle choices. This gap in patient–clinician dialogue is perhaps the result of a lack of structured training in medical school surrounding the compo- nents of lifestyle medicine. Context: Although Harvard Medical School does have a required course in nutrition, there are no requirements for the other components of lifestyle medicine, including physical activity, behaviour change and self-care. Innovation: Since 2009 Harvard Medical School has addressed this absence in the curriculum by developing a student-led, faculty member-advised, parallel curricu- lum in lifestyle medicine. Medical student participants were invited to take part in anonymous questionnaires between 2009 and 2013, which gathered data about personal ability and attitude in counselling patients on lifestyle behaviours, as well as subjective data on the curriculum content and applications to effective medical practice. Implication: Each year, students have pointed to a lack of lifestyle medicine knowledge because of a gap in the traditional curriculum surrounding topics such as physical activity, nutrition and behaviour-change strategies, and indicated that the inclusion of this knowledge and these skills was an important component of medical education. Although participation is currently volun- tary, this is the first such curriculum of this type and addresses a critical gap in undergraduate medical education.
JMIR Medical Education
Background: Lifestyle medicine is the science and application of healthy lifestyles as interventions for the prevention and treatment of disease, and has gained significant momentum as a specialty in recent years. College is a critical time for maintenance and acquisition of healthy habits. Longer-term, more intensive web-based and in-person lifestyle medicine interventions can have a positive effect. Students who are exposed to components of lifestyle medicine in their education have improvements in their health behaviors. A semester-long undergraduate course focused on lifestyle medicine can be a useful intervention to help adopt and sustain healthy habits. Objective: To describe a novel, evidence based curriculum for a course teaching the concepts of Lifestyle Medicine based on a web-based course offered at the Harvard Extension School. Methods: The course was delivered in a web-based format. The Lifestyle Medicine course used evidence based principles to guide students toward a "coach approach" to behavior change, increasing their self-efficacy regarding various lifestyle-related preventive behaviors. Students are made to understand the cultural trends and national guidelines that have shaped lifestyle medicine recommendations relating to behaviors. They are encouraged to engage in behavior change. Course topics include physical activity, nutrition, addiction, sleep, stress, and lifestyle coaching and counseling. The course addressed all of the American College of Preventive Medicine/American College of Lifestyle Medicine competencies save for the competency of office systems and technologies to support lifestyle medicine counseling. Results: The course was well-received, earning a ranking of 4.9/5 at the school. Conclusions: A novel, semester-long course on Lifestyle Medicine at the Harvard Extension School is described. Student evaluations suggest the course was well-received. Further research is needed to evaluate whether such a course empowers students to adopt behavior changes.
Israel Journal of Health Policy Research
Background Promoting healthy lifestyle is key to tackling lifestyle-induced diseases, yet many doctors feel unskilled and medical schools lack its inclusion in their curricula. The impact of a novel elective lifestyle course is described, where students provided 3 months’ coaching to at-risk patients. Methods Students’ attitudes, competence and lifestyle were assessed pre- and post the 18-month course. Patients’ health measures and behaviors were measured. Student and patient views were ascertained. Results Nineteen students, 13 controls, and 29 patients participated. Perception of physicians’ importance as lifestyle consultants increased in coaching students (mean ± SD 3.7 ± 0.4 vs. 3.2 ± 0.5; p = 0.05). Self-perceived competence remained high in coaching students (6.7 ± 1.8 vs. 6.7 ± 1.2; p = 0.66). Controls’ competence increased but did not attain coaching students’ levels (3.6 ± 2.1 vs. 5.5 ± 1.9; p = 0.009). Focus groups of students confirmed self-perceived acquisition of skill...