Training Health Professionals to Deliver Healthy Living Medicine

The growing incidence and prevalence of unhealthy living behaviors leading to compromised health, along with unhealthy supportive environments, are the primary reasons for the current chronic disease crisis in almost all countries. Over the course of health professions training across disciplines, a large amount about information regarding various aspects of chronic disease is introduced, from pathophysiology to a broad array of approaches to examinations (focused on diagnosis and prognosis) and interventions. Currently, a late primary or secondary prevention focus is the primary educational approach in the health professions. In either scenario, the health professional is often trained to approach their discipline from a catch up approach, with little focus on how an individual's health condition, at the time of presentation, came to be. It is unfortunate that so little educational time and effort are devoted to train future health professionals on how to practice Healthy Living Medicine (HLM) and, deliver healthy living (HL) interventions. The primary goal should be to keep individuals healthy where they live, work and go to school and minimize initiating care in the hospital and outpatient clinical setting. The current review describes current trends in training health professionals in HLM and the delivery of HL interventions.