Lifestyle Medicine Insider April 2020

ADVOCACY | MEDIA | EDUCATION | RESEARCH | ECONOMICS | COMMUNITY

Lifestyle Medicine Insider , a periodic look into the political, industry and economic environment we face as Lifestyle Medicine pioneers.

COVID-19

Food and Nutrition

Food’s effect on metabolism and immunity: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/well/eat/coronavirus-diet-metabolic-health.html An opinion piece on food as medicine: https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/493127-healthy-food-the-unexpected-medicine-for-covid-19-and-national-security America's junk food diet makes us even more vulnerable to coronavirus: https://bit.ly/3aAPRC7

Pre-Existing Conditions

From MedPage, an article on the baseline health of our country going into this pandemic: https://bit.ly/3bwxBex On obesity as a risk factor: https://www.newsweek.com/obesity-covid-19-risk-coronavirus-hospitalization-1497791 Former ACLM President David Katz, MD, MPH, interviewed on Real Time by Bill Maher last week, gives a shout-out to ACLM and Lifestyle Medicine, emphasizing the need to rein in lifestyle-related chronic conditions and thereby decrease the percentage of the population classified as “most vulnerable” to infectious diseases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lze-rMYLf2E If you don’t have time to watch it, here is a good summary: https://www.straight.com/covid-19-pandemic/dr-david-katz-explains-health-risks-of-lengthy-lockdowns-and-why-covid-19-turns-chronic  Research on NYC patients: Presenting Characteristics, Comorbidities, and Outcomes Among 5700 Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 in the New York City Area Analysis of global data and chronic disease: https://medium.com/@DrDavidKatz/what-we-are-learning-from-global-data-on-covid-19-so-far-4c94d0c72b54   A glimpse of COVID-19 deaths and pre-existing conditions in Italy:

Health Disparities

Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (MD) sent the following letter urging the leaders of all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and U.S. territories to collect demographic data on racial disparities and the coronavirus. Impact on physicians of color: https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/health-equity/how-covid-19-affecting-physicians-color-across-country?utm_source=fbpage&utm_medium=social_a How the virus is affecting one of the nation’s wealthiest black counties: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/covid-19-is-ravaging-one-of-the-countrys-wealthiest-black-counties/ar-BB13eFg7?ocid=spartanntp

Impact on Care Delivery

Impact of the virus on care delivery: https://www.healthevolution.com/insider/covid-19-response-signals-an-immediate-shift-in-the-future-of-care-delivery-if-it-lasts/#consumerism Surgeon General Jerome Adams announced a new telehealth website (https://telehealth.hhs.gov/) as a resource for providers and patients.

NUTRITION

The report from the recent 50th Anniversary of the White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health held mentions of nutrition education, policy changes, disparities and sustainability: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000171-0e13-d270-a773-6f5ff7ea0000  One of the priority recommendations was “Equip health professionals with effective nutrition interventions and better nutrition knowledge. With diet-related disease being the number one cause of poor health in America, nutrition should be among the top priorities in our health care system. Health providers need better nutrition training and effective, evidence-based nutrition interventions, tailored to specific populations, that can improve diet-related health outcomes and reduce healthcare costs.”

ITLC COMPETENCIES

ACLM’s Expert Lifestyle Medicine Panel (ELMP) proposes a set of competencies for providers who specialize in the practice of lifestyle medicine (LM), focused on intensive therapeutic lifestyle change: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1559827619856542

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