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WELCOME TO THE ACLM LEARNING CENTER, Anonymous WELCOME TO THE ACLM LEARNING CENTER
Take a lifestyle medicine course, change a life – including your own
There’s no better time than now to learn more about lifestyle medicine, the most powerful way to treat, reverse, and prevent chronic conditions. Our courses provide knowledge and applicable skills to support you and your patients in achieving better health.
From food as medicine and foundational skill building to type-2 diabetes remission and burnout reduction, ACLM offers courses on today’s most important topics to help you elevate your practice for a better tomorrow.
Featured courses
Explore our most popular and impactful courses—handpicked to help you advance your knowledge and apply lifestyle medicine in practice.
Fresh courses, timely topics
Explore the latest courses, clinical tools, and resources designed to help you stay at the forefront of evidence-based care. New content is added regularly—check back often to stay ahead.
Lifestyle change, as an essential treatment intervention to addressing chronic disease, is increasing among physicians and health professionals internationally. Lifestyle, once recognized as an essential prevention strategy, is now acknowledged as a foundational and efficacious treatment approach for a redesigned healthcare system for improved outcomes, lower costs, and improved patient satisfaction. In this activity, the 2020-2022 ACLM President, Cate Collings, MD, MS, FACC, FACLM defines lifestyle medicine, discusses the evidence base, explains six key interventions, and demonstrates how lifestyle medicine has the power to treat and often reverse disease and provide a solution for real health care reform.
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Build core lifestyle medicine skills you can use todayGain a practical foundation in lifestyle medicine with this short, self-paced cert
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This activity reviews the implementation and outcomes of a 12-week plant-based nutrition intervention designed for adults with type 2 diabetes in a primary care setting. Participants attended weekly online group sessions and were encouraged to follow a plant-based dietary pattern, with outcomes including body weight, HbA1c, cholesterol levels, and medication use evaluated over the course of the program.
Learners will explore the feasibility, accessibility, and clinical impact of incorporating plant-based nutrition interventions into diabetes management. The study findings demonstrate significant improvements in glycemic control, weight reduction, lipid profiles, and decreased reliance on diabetes medications, highlighting the potential role of lifestyle-based approaches in the treatment of type 2 diabetes within routine primary care practice.
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As cancer detection and treatments are advancing, effective survivorship care is critical to address the medical, physical, emotional, social, and financial issues. Cancer survivorship begins on the day of diagnosis and involves a whole-person approach beyond active medical treatment, emphasizing the need for comprehensive survivorship care. Caring for survivors is not limited to oncologists but extends to a multidisciplinary team, including primary care clinicians, specialists, and health professional team members, to ensure whole-person and sustained care. Currently, there are over 18 million cancer survivors in the U.S., and that number is estimated to increase to 26 million by 2040. Survivorship care leads to improved quality of life, physical functioning, reduced risk of recurrence, development or worsening of chronic diseases, improved management of treatment-related side effects, enhanced emotional well-being, and reduced anxiety and depression. Lifestyle medicine (LM) plays a pivotal role in cancer survivorship care. Yet, despite research highlighting its importance, its integration into oncology and general medicine remains underexplored in professional forums, which are critical venues for disseminating information and sharing updates. This session seeks to highlight the untapped potential of LM in medical practice and provide practical strategies for incorporating it into clinical care. With the growing population of cancer survivors, addressing this gap is essential to improving outcomes and enhancing the quality of life for patients. LM encompasses evidence-based interventions that align with national survivorship guidelines, such as those of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the American Cancer Society (ACS), and National Comprehensive Care Network (NCCN). Cancer centers should incorporate lifestyle medicine clinics into their survivorship programs. These clinics include an interdisciplinary team of clinicians, including physicians, nurse practitioners, dietitians, psychologists, and physical therapists. This integrated approach leads to personalized, whole-person care that addresses each survivor's unique requirements.
In this session, we will highlight key aspects essential to oncology care and will also discuss strategies to implement these tools in the clinic, drawing on actionable insights from successful programs such as the Paving the Path at Mass General Hospital, led by Dr. Comander, which has demonstrated improved patient outcomes through integrating lifestyle medicine in oncology care. We will review the six pillars of lifestyle medicine and discuss their evidence-based relevance to oncology, emphasizing their role in improving patient outcomes and reducing recurrence risks. We will explore barriers to implementing LM programs in oncology, addressing challenges such as patient engagement, healthcare infrastructure, and resource availability. We will also describe strategies for integrating LM into oncology care, showcasing practical approaches for incorporating these principles into clinical practice to enhance survivorship and overall patient well-being. In addition to clinical insights, the session will emphasize the role of multidisciplinary care in survivorship programs, present successful lifestyle medicine programs for cancer survivors as case studies, and the current ACLM cancer toolkit.
While lifestyle medicine provides significant benefits, implementation is challenging. This session will explore strategies for overcoming these challenges, including utilizing telehealth, shared medical appointments, and technology to improve accessibility and support long-term behavior change. This session aims to deliver evidence-based insights and actionable tools that attendees can apply. It is designed for healthcare team members, health executives, and anyone with a personal or professional interest in cancer survivorship.
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Chronic diseases, responsible for most of the $4.5 trillion spent annually on healthcare in the United States, are a leading cause of mortality and reduced quality of life. Older adults disproportionately bear the burden of these conditions, yet many healthcare professionals receive inadequate education on how to provide comprehensive, lifestyle-oriented care to this population. The urgent need to address this gap underscores the importance of interprofessional education (IPE) in preparing healthcare teams to meet the unique needs of older adults. This session highlights innovative IPE programs that integrate lifestyle medicine principles into the training of healthcare professionals across disciplines. Through initiatives such as interdisciplinary case conceptualizations, Project ECHO: Care of Older Adults, and interdisciplinary case management experiences, learners from fields including medicine, nursing, social work, and dentistry collaborate on real-world scenarios to apply lifestyle medicine strategies like nutrition, physical activity, stress management, and social connection. These programs foster practical, team-based approaches that emphasize prevention and holistic care.
Participants in this session will gain insights into the design and implementation of these programs, the integration of lifestyle medicine content, and strategies for overcoming challenges in interprofessional education. By sharing examples of collaborative learning modules, successful program outcomes, and lessons learned, this session will inspire attendees to replicate and scale interprofessional efforts in their own settings. The presentation will also address the broader implications of integrating lifestyle medicine into education and practice. By fostering collaboration among physicians, nurses, social workers, community health workers, and other professionals, IPE lifestyle medicine programs advance whole-person care and promote health equity. Attendees will leave equipped with actionable strategies to implement team-based approaches that enhance outcomes for older adults and diverse patient populations. In a healthcare system often dominated by silos, interprofessional education provides a powerful tool to address the lack of training in lifestyle medicine and geriatrics. Whether you are an educator, clinician, or administrator, this session will provide the tools and inspiration needed to champion lifestyle medicine through interdisciplinary collaboration.
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The rise of ultra-processed foods in the United States, spurred by acquisitions from tobacco companies and later influenced by profit-driven hedge funds, has led to these products dominating Americans’ diets at the expense of public health. Studies link high consumption of ultra-processed foods to increased risks of a variety of adverse health outcomes, including all-cause mortality. However, these associations appear to be driven largely by sweetened beverages and processed meats, raising the possibility that plant-based meats (PBM) could ironically offer a solution to the ultra-processed foods problem. Unlike other ultra-processed foods, PBMs score as healthier than the foods they are intended to substitute and similarly countervail other negative criteria typical of ultra-processed products. Compared with PBM, conventional meat has the worse nutrient profile, higher calorie density, more missing phytonutrients, and results in less satiety and more weight gain, gut dysbiosis, and oxidative stress. Insulin resistance and inflammation outcomes are similar or superior to meat, depending on the PBM tested, and heat-induced toxins and harmful additives depend on the chemicals in question. Other advantages to PBM include lower cancer risk and enhanced food safety. The lowering of LDL cholesterol from the partial replacement of meat with PBM could alone potentially save thousands of lives a year in the United States and billions of healthcare dollars. Whole plant foods fare even better, but PBMs appear to be the rare ultra-processed exception in that they are preferable to the foods they were designed to replace.
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Complimentary content to support your practice
Explore free courses and tools designed to support your practice and deepen your understanding of lifestyle medicine. A free account is required to access the content listed below.
Become an ACLM member and save on courses
ACLM membership doesn’t just give you access to valuable lifestyle medicine tools, events, and networking opportunities. It also allows you to save up to 25% on any ACLM continuing education course.
