American Medical Association and Lifestyle Medicine
American Medical Association's Commitment to Lifestyle Medicine
by Tricia McMahon
This article highlights two programs of particular interest and service to practitioners of Lifestyle Medicine and the patients they serve. The AMA's Healthier Life Steps™ Program, and the EPoCH Program offer tools, connections, and conversation to assist physicians and patients in the pursuit of healthy lifestyle changes.
Healthier Life Steps™ Program website
In 2005 AMA staff was summoned to explore strategic health issues. Upon the submission and review of 'white papers,' "healthy lifestyles" emerged as an essential component to be addressed within the AMA's Primary Prevention focus.
AMA Healthier Life Steps™ was developed to provide information and resources to support a physician-patient partnership in order to improve four key health behaviors:
1) Healthy Eating
2) Physical Activity
3) Tobacco Cessation
4) Reducing Risky Drinking
Significantly related to heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and other conditions, taking steps now to improve the above key lifestyle behaviors can help prevent and manage these serious health conditions.
The AMA Healthier Life Steps™ Program consists of tools to assist doctors in addressing these sensitive issues with patients. The goal is for discussion about these key lifestyle behaviors to become part of the 'vitals' that doctors regularly note and understand. These tools are intended to facilitate the conversation by keeping it within a realistic realm for what can be addressed in the time allowed, not being cumbersome to implement and attuned to identifying whether or not the patient is ready to change.
Tools for physicians and other health care professionals:
The Physicians' Guide describes the important role physicians play in fostering lifestyle change, and explains how physicians can implement strategies to assess patients' readiness to change and how to counsel patients on making these changes. The tool-kit provides a self-assessment questionnaire, action plans, progress tracking calendars, and a poster to help physicians help patients implement needed behavior changes.
After completing the Physician Guide, participants should be able to:
1) Utilize references about healthy lifestyles and behavior changes that impact patients' lives
2) Implement strategies to assess patients' readiness to change poor lifestyle behaviors
3) Counsel patients on lifestyle changes and provide action plans when appropriate
CME credit available.
The tool kit also provides:
1) a self-assessment questionnaire
2) action plans
3) progress tracking calendars
4) poster to remind physicians, staff, and patients to incorporate healthy lifestyle discussions into
every office visit
Tools for Patients to partner with their physician or other health care provider to make lasting changes in these four key health behaviors to live a longer, healthier life.
This tangent of the program provides a tool-kit to help patients partner with their physician to improve the four key health behaviors - poor diet, physical inactivity, tobacco use, and excessive or risky use of alcohol. The tool-kit includes:
1) a self-assessment questionnaire
2) action plans
3) progress tracking calendars
4) links to other resources.
These resources are valuable to patient articulation of goals and conversation with their health provider. Discussing plans with their physician, to make sure they are on the right track and getting the support they need to make these changes in a healthy way, is imperative. These tools assist with that exploration and discussion.
User-friendly tools are easy to access
These resources are not only available on the AMA website and communicated through AMA newsletters. WebMD has proven to be an important way for the AMA to encourage patients to ask their doctor about lifestyle issues; to take the initiative in conversing with medical professionals rather than expect their doctor to inquire.
Medscape has made a tremendous impact on informing the medical profession about this program, with thousands of nurses, physicians, and other healthcare providers earning continuing education credits from the AMA Healthier Life Steps Clinicians Guide on Medscape. The AMA does not, as yet, have a tracking method for the degree that the tools are utilized.
Questions or comments? Please contact the AMA at Healthier.LifeSteps@ama-assn.org
************************
EPoCH Program---Educating Physicians on Controversies and Challenges in Health
Educating Physicians on Controversies and Challenges in Health is a series of brief informational Web streaming programs-developed by the AMA-targeting primary care physicians. The objective of these programs is to inform physicians about the challenges and controversies at the interface of clinical medicine and public health and to offer possible strategies to address these issues in their practices.
Each five to ten-minute program is presented in video format with an on-camera narrator, a slide presentation on emerging controversial or challenging health care issues and footage to illustrate the issue. The programs are presented in an unbiased format and are designed to initiate candid discussion among physicians.
Most recent topic:
Motivational Interviewing-to help change /improve patient health behavior. This instructional video defines motivational interviewing, outlines basic application of its principles and how it differs from traditional physician/patient interaction. The goal is to assist the patient in discovering their own motivation to change utilizing open-ended questions, affirmations, and reflective listening. The patient is expected to identify, articulate and resolve their own ambivalence in order to fully engage a process of lifestyle changes.
CME credit available
AMA Website:
www.ama-assn.org
Please wait...
