Orlando Health Unveils Lifestyle Medicine Program on Orlando Medical News

Orlando Health Unveils Lifestyle Medicine Program

By: LYNNE JETER

New Department Represents First of its Kind in the Nation

The University of Central Florida (UCF) and Rippe Health have partnered on a unique lifestyle medicine program for Orlando Health to educate patients and physicians about preventive medicine.

World-renowned cardiologist James M. Rippe, MD, one of the nation's foremost lifestyle medicine experts, collaborated with the university and the not-for-profit healthcare organization in December to create the first department of its kind in the nation. The goal: to keep patients healthy and help decrease their chances for cancer, heart disease, stroke and diabetes by providing counseling and materials about lifestyle changes that can impact their health.

"Lifestyle medicine isn't simply about prolonging life, it's about ensuring people can enjoy their later years with less pain and disease," said Rippe, noting that lifestyle medicine encompasses the study and practice of how to help individuals understand that their daily habits and practices have a profound impact on their short- and long-term health and quality of life. "The future of healthcare is not only in treating the sick, but also in caring for those who are still well. Bringing lifestyle medicine to patients at Orlando Health is an important step in improving the health of the entire community."

According to Rippe, an estimated 70 to 80 percent of all deaths in the United States can be tied to poor lifestyle choices.

"There's no longer any serious doubt that regular habits and actions impact in significant ways on both prevention of disease as well as treatment of disease," he said. "Such interventions as weight management, proper nutrition, physical activity and smoking cessation have all been shown by literally hundreds of studies to improve health outcomes."

The Rippe Lifestyle Institute, Rippe's clinical research laboratory, has taken a leadership position in developing the new field of medicine, and Orlando Health is the first hospital in America to embrace the principles of lifestyle medicine as one of the components of its broad mission to improve the health of individuals in Central Florida.

Rippe also plans to conduct further research at the institute and The Center for Lifestyle Medicine at UCF (CLM at UCF) and to use his latest findings to create curricula for Orlando Health's medical staff and patients. CLM at UCF represents the first multi-disciplinary, academic center at a major university devoted to research on the impact of lifestyle habits and choices on the prevention and/or management of disease.

Jay Falk, MD, vice president of medical education for Orlando Health, expects the hospital system's partnership with Rippe and UCF to propel Orlando to the forefront of lifestyle medicine.

"This new partnership will allow us to not only educate seasoned doctors and residents about the potential benefits of lifestyle medicine on their patients," said Falk, "but it will also enable us to counsel patients who have risk factors for disease before they even leave the hospital."

Unfortunately, the insurance industry has been somewhat slow to recognize the impact of daily habits and actions on both short- and long-term health and quality of life.

"However, increasingly we're seeing insurance companies recognize the important role that proper nutrition, weight management and regular physical activity play not only in preventing disease, but also helping to treat disease if it's already present," he said. "For example, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida has established the 'Blue for You' program, which incorporates many of these principles."

With healthcare costs increasing at a double digit rate, it's clear the current system is no longer sustainable, Rippe pointed out.

"Increasingly, healthcare facilities and insurers are recognizing that forming partnerships with patients to help them understand the importance of daily habits and actions is a very cost effective way of improving individuals' health," he said. "This is one of the reasons why Orlando Health and Rippe Lifestyle Institute have partnered in the area of lifestyle medicine."

Despite reimbursement being an issue and the national economy being in poor shape, Orlando Health chose to establish the program now to show leadership in an area whose time has come, said Rippe.

"It's important to understand that the principles of lifestyle medicine are one of the most cost effective ways of helping individuals achieve better health outcomes without adding costs to the healthcare system," he said. "With the new Obama administration coming into office, there's already a very clear signal that wellness and prevention services are going to be emphasized as a key mechanism for trying to control healthcare costs as well as improving health."

Doctors who graduate from UCF's new School of Medicine will have the opportunity to enroll in the residency program at Orlando Regional Medical Center—the metro area's only statutory teaching hospital—and learn lifestyle medicine principles they can pass along to their patients.

"It's still way too early to tell how much interest there will be among UCF medical students," said Rippe. "These students are still in the process of applying to medical school. However, the fact that the residency program at Orlando Health will incorporate lifestyle medicine principles as part of its teaching should make it much more attractive to students from all medical schools. Physicians in training are increasingly recognizing the importance of forming partnerships with patients. The area of lifestyle medicine represents one great way of doing this."

The eventual goal, emphasized Rippe, will be to build a formal fellowship program in lifestyle medicine, adding "it's not possible to predict how long it would take before a fellowship program would be established."