Teaching What Truly Heals: Advancing Lifestyle Medicine in Health Professions Education

Presentation Summary: Health professions education stands at a transformative inflection point. National initiatives led by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), including MAHA ELEVATE, ACCESS, BALANCE, and the Rural Health Transformation priorities and funding reflect a growing federal commitment to lifestyle medicine as a cornerstone of chronic disease prevention and care. Together, these efforts present unprecedented opportunities to meaningfully integrate nutrition and lifestyle medicine throughout the health professions education continuum. This underscores the urgent opportunity to prepare a future-ready workforce equipped to prevent, treat, and, in many cases, reverse chronic disease through evidence-based therapeutic lifestyle interventions delivered by transdisciplinary care teams.

This session will highlight how educators and clinician-leaders can leverage this momentum to advance nutrition and lifestyle medicine across undergraduate, graduate, and continuing health professions education. Presenters will review key evidence, competencies, and national drivers supporting nutrition and LM education; share real-world curricular models, faculty development strategies, and implementation examples and engage participants in reflection on how to capitalize on emerging opportunities within diverse institutional and community-based settings.

Emphasis will be placed on interprofessional and transdisciplinary education, longitudinal curricular integration, applied teaching strategies, and alignment with accreditation standards and health system goals. Participants will leave with actionable tools and adaptable frameworks to strengthen faculty capacity, integrate nutrition and lifestyle medicine across programs, and prepare healthcare professions students to enter the workforce ready to address chronic disease through whole-person, patient-centered care. As healthcare systems increasingly prioritize prevention, equity, and value-based care, advancing nutrition and lifestyle medicine education is not only timely, it is essential. This session moves beyond awareness to implementation, empowering educators to harness current opportunities and prepare learners to deliver the care that truly heals.