The Lifestyle Medicine Center at VMC is celebrating four years of practice this month! In 2015, the Lifestyle Medicine Center launched with five staff members in the hub location at the Fitness Center on the main campus. Today, LMC provides service at five locations with more than 50 team members. The collaboration with the hospital and clinic network has been outstanding with over 7000 referrals and access to services by 17,000+ patients!

Lifestyle Medicine focuses on addressing modifiable health behaviors to optimize health and treat or prevent disease. The behaviors addressed include physical activity, nutrition, sleep and stress. The interdisciplinary team includes Physical/Occupational Therapists, Registered Dietitians, Exercise Physiologist, Wellness Coaches, Massage Therapists, RNs and Respiratory Therapists.

Clinical Programs include:

• Cardiac Rehabilitation
• Physical and Occupational Therapy
• Pulmonary Rehabilitation
• Nutrition Counseling
• Diabetes Self-Management and Education
• Prescriptive Exercise Training (Lifestyle 365)
• Healthy Foundations (Intensive multidisciplinary behavior modification)
• Massage Therapy*

Our Healthy Foundations program has been a signature platform at Lifestyle Medicine with over 600 participants since 2015. The 16-week intensive, multidisciplinary approach to behavior change has been successful in helping patients make significant changes in their overall health. This program served as a pilot location for the VMC Lifestyle Composite Index in 2018. This composite score, created by a team of VMC clinicians, measures modifiable health behavior as a patient reported outcome measure. The pilot study successfully demonstrated positive behavior change in the participants completing the Lifestyle Medicine program. Click here to view the Lifestyle Composite Index.

Some of the results of completed participants in the Lifestyle Medicine program in FY19 (n=108) include:

Average weight loss of 9.4 pounds, reduced body mass of 4.2%

• This well exceeds the goal of the Intensive Behavioral Program for Obesity approved by CMS which requires at least 6.6 pounds of weight loss over 6 months.

Hypertensive patients (n=72) saw an average reduction in systolic BP of 22 mmHg over the course of participation.

• This outcome exceeds the average expected reduction in systolic BP of 14-18mmHg with monotherapy medication use.

Lifestyle Composite Index improvement in health behavior score of participants by over 33%. (Improved composite score by an average of 9.95)

• This score change demonstrates considerable improvement in physical activity, nutritious eating, improved stress management and better sleep.

Other proven benefits that have not yet been captured with aggregate data collection are improved quality of life including better mood, less perceived stress; reduction in waist size; reduction in LDL/increase in HDL cholesterol and decreased need for medication use.

For more published evidence on the health benefits of optimizing health behavior, reference ACLM Scientific Evidence.

Screenshots of the available referral options for Lifestyle Medicine are available in the slides from the Aug. 14 Primary Care Provider meeting. (Note: you may be prompted to enter your VMC log-in to access this)

For additional information or to discuss these programs, please contact: Staci Lyons, Director of Lifestyle Medicine and Wellness Services, Staci_Lyons@Valleymed.org, 690.3160

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