ACPM advocates for incorporation of lifestyle medicine into health care
A New Approach For Total Population Health from Health Dialog on Vimeo.
WASHINGTON - The American College of Preventive Medicine and its Corporate Roundtable released a joint statement Wednesday stressing the need to incorporate lifestyle medicine into clinical practice to lower rates of chronic disease in America.
Lifestyle medicine is defined as a scientific approach to decreasing disease risk and illness through lifestyle interventions such as nutrition, physical activity, stress reduction, smoking cessation, avoidance of alcohol abuse and rest.
The statement — written by ACPM leadership and the private sector organizations who make up the Corporate Roundtable — comes at the conclusion of their one-day symposium on "Building Community Health and Wellbeing through Business, Culture and Policy."
"The United States is burdened by lifestyle-related diseases that threaten its economy and the wellbeing of its citizens," the statement read. "More than half of Americans cope with chronic disease; the nation's total direct and indirect economic cost for the most common chronic diseases is estimated to exceed $1 trillion annually. Projections indicate this figure could reach $6 trillion annually by 2050, an unsustainable reality that would devastate the U.S. economy."
The statement continues: "The American College of Preventive Medicine supports the advancement of lifestyle medicine in clinical practice to address this growing public health crisis."
ACPM suggested a series of strategic initiatives will be required to influence the successful advancement and adoption of lifestyle medicine in clinical practice, including:
Incorporating lifestyle medical competencies – physician leadership, knowledge and assessment and management skills – into clinical practice;
Educating consumers on the compelling link between behaviors and health to drive demand for lifestyle medicine;
Securing the support of public and private payers for reimbursement of lifestyle interventions that have been shown to prevent, treat and reverse chronic disease; and
Securing the support of employers in benefit design and incentives based on their influential role in determining reimbursable services.
There are already marketplace examples of healthcare providers who have incorporated lifestyle medicine into their clinical practice. For example, it's the kind of disease management approach taken by companies like Rite Aid's Health Dialog. "Twenty years ago we helped to invent a business that's referred to as the disease management business," Web Golinkin, Health Dialog CEO, explained in an introductory video. "Today, we've evolved into a leading population health management company working with health plans, risk-bearing providers and self-insured employers to improve the health of the populations that they are responsible for and reducing overall costs."
The Building Community Health symposium convened senior-level representatives from the healthcare, academic, business, policy and human resources fields on Feb. 23 to discuss ways in which employers, insurers and health providers can work together to advance innovative new programs in-line with these strategic initiatives. Robin Schepper, senior adviser of the Bipartisan Policy Center, provided the keynote address.
The symposium was held at the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City, Va., in conjunction with Preventive Medicine 2016, the annual meeting of ACPM, and was additionally supported by the Georgetown University School of Nursing and Health Studies and sponsored by BioMeasure.