Lifestyle Medicine Connections  

Across the Globe

As we grow and promote our lifestyle medicine community here in the US, several other countries are beginning to do the same. During his tenure, our immediate past president, Wayne Dysinger, had communications with a number of countries, including Israel, India, England, Ireland, Canada, Botswana, Sweden, Mexico, and Philippines about lifestyle medicine. He also presented at the conference of the Australian Lifestyle Medicine Association in the fall of 2011. I communicated with Brazil on possible lifestyle medicine physician training programs.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to make a presentation in South Korea at the first lifestyle medicine symposium held in that country last December. More than a dozen physicians and scientists affiliated with the Chonbuk University Medical Center have banded together to start a research program dedicated to lifestyle medicine. The textbook by Egger was recently translated into Korean. It is being used by the first year medical students as part of the first medical school curriculum in lifestyle medicine. Plans are also underway to develop a book targeting lay audiences.

What We Have in Common
The health care systems and reimbursement models differ across countries, but what we have in common is the need to support patients to live healthy lifestyles. Chronic diseases are the number one cause of morbidity and mortality burden in developed countries, and these diseases are escalating in developing countries. In fact, interest in lifestyle medicine is rising among the latter. ACLM was recently contacted by the family medicine faculty group of the West African College of Physicians expressing its eagerness to collaborate with us.