Research Opportunities and Challenges in the Era of Healthy Living Medicine: Unlocking the Potential

Non-communicable diseases, such as cardiovascular disease (CVD), obesity, cancer, pulmonary disease, and diabetes are a very high global health concern. The health costs of risk factors for CVD, such as hypertension (HTN), is mounting and are unrelenting. As an example, it is estimated that direct and indirect costs due to HTN amounted to $46.4 billion in 2011 and projections of six-fold increases by 2030; the importance of low-cost nonpharmacological interventions involving collaborative teams of health care professionals is at a critical junction. Certainly, the data supported by research including some clinical trials for healthy living interventions support deploying health education, nutrition, smoking cessation, and physical activity(PA) in preventing CVD risk, such as HTN. Exercise training (ET) for blood pressure (BP) control has been shown to be an effective and integral component of BP management. However, less is known about what optimization of PA/ET modalities with nutrition and lifestyle tracking with modern era technologies will bring to this equation. New research methods may need to consider how to collaborate to collect data in using teams of researchers while interacting with community centers, school systems, and in traditional health care practices. This review will discuss and present what is known about the research that support modern era healthy living medicine and how this data may be integrated in venues that support health lifestyle in the community (i.e. schools and the work place).