In-Person Workshop: How to Effectively Integrate Lifestyle Medicine into the Workplace

For lifestyle medicine to continue to grow as a practice, we need to understand all influences on healthy lifestyle choices. This means that clinicians must understand the limits of individual choice and the influence of the cultures in which our patients work. The wellness industry is a 4.6 trillion-dollar enterprise of mostly unproven tactics that are more commercial in aspirations than they are in promoting healthy lifestyle. Roughly a third of that is spent on workplace-related efforts. Employers are interested because they know the cost of poor health, not only in pharmacy and medical claims, but also in employee satisfaction, productivity and other health and well-being related attributes. We don't want lifestyle medicine to fail like workplace wellness. For employers to see successful lifestyle medicine outcomes, they need to understand and be lead on how to create a workplace well-being culture that supports healthy lifestyles. Otherwise, our efforts will be met with the challenge of our patients swimming upstream, against the current of an unsupportive workday. This workshop will position the participant to inform and lead efforts with employers on how to position the workplace culture to support healthy lifestyle choices. The longitudinal lifestyle medicine programs, like DPP and CHIP, that are being delivered in the workplace are helpful, but when you look at the data, there is room for improvement. The impact is great for some and non-existent for others. Furthermore, the outcomes data weakens the farther past the program end data one looks. One reason is that these changes are being made in a vacuum. We must change the workplace culture to support healthy lifestyles to achieve sustained and broader adoption of healthy habits. Complimenting this global strategy, participants will be able to counsel their patients on how to navigate the workplace, such that patients leverage opportunities to create additional strategies to support their healthy lifestyle and not allow contrary forces to thwart their effort. Just think about your own workplace experience. How often have your efforts to adopt or maintain a healthy habit been thwarted by a well-intentioned colleague who brings in leftover treats? How often have you lost sleep because of a work relationship or an interaction that was unfavorable? The workplace culture of well-being strategy addresses every lifestyle medicine pillar.