Military physicians need more lifestyle medicine training

ORLANDO — Lifestyle medicine interventions and training in the military can improve health for service members. However military physicians remain unconfident in providing them, according to a poster at the Lifestyle Medicine Conference.

“In terms of delivering health care in the military, it’s about readiness,” Jeffrey J. Smith, DSW, LCSW, DipACLM, of the 1st Special Operations Medical Group and Air Force Special Operations Command, and the study’s author, told Healio. “Lifestyle medicine (LM) is a comprehensive, cost-effect treatment that’s evidence based and seems to be an effective treatment for our war fighters and their families.”

Smith conducted a cross-sectional survey of 352 attendees at the Uniformed Service Academy of Family Physicians Conference asking how confident they were with providing LM interventions.

Of the respondents, 42% were comfortable providing LM interventions regarding stress, 48% for physical activity and 45% for unhealthy eating. They were more comfortable providing them for alcohol (52%) and tobacco (64%) use interventions. Eighty percent of respondents did agree that LM interventions are important, however.

According to Smith, these results show that more training is needed for military physicians in LM interventions and their benefits.

“In general, lifestyle medicine is where the training needs to be. Where the emphasis needs to be in terms of our health care system,” he said. “[Service members are] providing humanitarian and military combat-related operations across the globe for our national security. In order to do that, they need to be ready and fit to fight so that we have an effective military.”