VIDEO: Residents become teachers to deliver lifestyle medicine to underserved teens

ORLANDO — Medical residents can effectively teach high school students about lifestyle medicine and its principles, according to a presenter at the American College of Lifestyle Medicine’s annual conference.

Toqa Afifi, MD, a medical resident at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School, presented research on introducing a lifestyle medicine curriculum to teens in communities in and around Boston.

“We tried an approach of introducing lifestyle medicine pillars and teachings by having our own residents teach the young teens in surrounding high schools and local high schools that are considered an underserved population,” she said. “We wanted to have sort of an interactive, in-person session ... and introduce some of these principles that we've learned through our own medical education and the lifestyle medicine residency curriculum.”

Afifi said the curriculum, developed by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, included three in-person sessions at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital.

“The students seemed very engaged,” she said.

The residents “were able to educate high schoolers in an underserved community on healthy lifestyles and promote teaching of lifestyle medicine principles,” according to the poster Afifi presented.

Afifi acknowledged several barriers to introducing the curriculum —ike including having the students travel to the hospital and time constraints — but said the team is already working on solutions to those challenges.

“Introducing the six pillars of lifestyle medicine is pretty dense in terms of material to do it in such a short period of time,” Afifi said. “In the future, we thought maybe we could create incentive for the students by having certain certificates handed to them at the end of the program to encourage them to attend.”