Integration of Lifestyle Medicine into the Medical Undergraduate Curriculum

One of the major challenges faced by the health care facilities globally is the significant shift of the global burden of disease from communicable diseases to non-communicable ones (1). The alarm on the rising rates of noncommunicable diseases has been sounded by the public health, and epidemiological and clinical communities for at least the past forty years (2). Lifestyle medicine provides an evidence-based solution to the problem of non-communicable diseases epidemic. However, the inclusion of lifestyle medicine in the medical undergraduate curriculum is minimal to non-existent. The medical school curriculum reform must include the mandatory training of all the medical undergraduate students in lifestyle medicine. This will resolve the inadequacies that exist in preparing physicians for the ever-growing challenge of non-communicable diseases they will have to treat and prevent (3). The resolution 959 was released in 2017 by the American Medical Association House of Delegates. It “supports policies and mechanisms that incentivize and/ or provide funding for the inclusion of lifestyle medicine education and social determinants of health in undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education (3, 4).”