Who will deliver comprehensive healthy lifestyle interventions to combat non-communicable disease? Introducing the healthy lifestyle practitioner discipline Article

Full Text via DOI: 10.1586/14779072.2016.1107477 PMID: 26524498 Web of Science: 000384639600003

Cited authors

  • Arena, Ross; Lavie, Carl J.; Hivert, Marie-France; Williams, Mark A.; Briggs, Paige D.; Guazzi, Marco

Abstract

  • Unhealthy lifestyle characteristics (i.e., physical inactivity, excess body mass, poor diet, and smoking) as well as associated poor health metrics (i.e., dyslipidemia, hyperglycemia, and hypertension) are the primary reasons for the current non-communicable disease crisis. Compared to those with the poorest of lifestyles and associated health metrics, any movement toward improving lifestyle and associated health metrics improves health outcomes. To address the non-communicable disease crisis we must: 1) acknowledge that healthy lifestyle (HL) interventions are a potent medicine; and 2) move toward a healthcare system that embraces primordial as much as, if not more than, secondary prevention with a heavy focus on HL medicine. This article introduces the Healthy Lifestyle Practitioner, focused on training health professionals to deliver HL medicine.

Publication date

  • 2016

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 1477-9072

Start page

  • 15

End page

  • 22

Volume

  • 14

Issue

  • 1