The annual conference of American College of Lifestyle Medicine gathered over 2,000 lifestyle medicine experts from all over the world to Denver, CO in November for the Lifestyle Medicine 2023 conference. Several collaborative research projects by WesternU investigators were presented.
Melanee Barbee from WesternU Health, Pomona, presented the poster ‘Do Medical Students in a Lifestyle Medicine Track Have Higher Health Self-Perceptions than Their Peers?’ by COMP students Lexi R. Martin Lavell and Moorea D. Maguire, who collaborated with Melanie Barbee, Crystal Rivera and Juan Ramirez. Dr. Anu Räisänen presented a poster ‘Development of an evidence-based resistance training program targeting improvements in health outcomes in postmenopausal women’, that was a collaboration with WesternU students Jakia Islam and Charlott Rubi Dixon and Dr. Molly O’Rourke. Dr. Räisänen also presented a poster on a collaboration across three Oregon-based universities: Pacific University in Forest Grove, OR, George Fox University in Portland, OR, and WesternU-Oregon in Lebanon, OR. The poster by Dr. Alyssa Phillips, Dr. Trevor St. Clair and Dr. Anu Räisänen was titled ‘Lifestyle Medicine as a Curricular Thread in Graduate Occupational Therapy Education: Scoping Review and Feasibility’.
In addition, Drs. Zipporah Brown and Anu Räisänen from College of Health Sciences-Northwest in Lebanon, OR, presented a session titled ‘Implementing Lifestyle Medicine Competencies in Didactic and Clinical Settings for Allied Health Professionals’. In this hour-long session they covered the importance of incorporating lifestyle medicine competencies in allied health professions curriculums and presented examples of how this work has been done in occupational therapy and physical therapy programs.
The WesternU Department of Physical Therapy Education-Oregon was the first Doctor of Physical Therapy program in the country to implement the American College of Lifestyle Medicine Partial Academic Pathway. The students who successfully complete the course approved for this, PT 5360 Physiologic Basis of Exercise, Wellness and Nutrition will receive a conference waiver that they can use within three years of graduation if they want to become certified in lifestyle medicine. Due to the conference waiver, the students are not required to complete 10 hours of in-person continued medical education but can sit for the lifestyle medicine board exam after completing 30 hours of online education.