Education of Residents Improves Frequency and Alignment of Evidence-Based Lifestyle Interventions

The United States spends more on health care than any other nation, yet hundreds of thousands of Americans die each year from conditions that could be prevented through basic lifestyle changes. Although about 80% of premature deaths are linked to unhealthy behaviors, Lifestyle Medicine (LM) receives little emphasis in most medical school and residency curricula. LM offers a low-cost, accessible approach to preventing and even reversing chronic disease through evidence-based lifestyle interventions (EBLI). Although LM fellowships exist, residency training is also important because it strongly shapes long-term clinical practice. However, most programs do not routinely teach LM principles or practical EBLI counseling skills. From October 2024 to June 2025, we delivered ten sessions introducing Family Medicine (FM) and Osteopathic Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine (ONMM) residents to core EBLI concepts. To measure impact, we retrospectively reviewed clinical notes, using keyword searches to assess the frequency and quality of documented EBLI recommended 3 months before and after the curriculum. Five independent reviewers scored notes using a standardized rubric. After training, mean scores increased from 0.9 to 1.9 for frequency (P = 0.023) and from 0.6 to 1.7 for alignment with EBLI (P = 0.011). These results indicate that integrating LM into routine resident didactics is feasible and improves EBLI integration into patient care.