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Background. Differences in socioeconomic status contribute to inequalities in lifestyle habits and burden of noncommunicable diseases. We aimed to examine how the effects of a 1-year structured lifestyle education program associate with the participant's educational level and socioeconomic area (SEA) of residence. Methods. One hundred individuals (64% women) with high cardiovascular risk were included. Education level (nonuniversity vs university degree) was self-reported and SEA (low vs high) defined by living in different SEAs. Lifestyle habits and quality of life were self-reported, cardiovascular risk factors and Framingham 10-year cardiovascular disease risk were measured at baseline and after 1 year. Results. Sedentary behavior decreased in both nonuniversity degree and low SEA group over 1 year, with a significantly greater improvement in daily activity behavior in low- compared with high-SEA group. Abdominal obesity decreased significantly more in the nonuniversity compared with the university degree group. Cardiovascular risk and quality of life improved in all groups, however, with greater discrimination when using educational level as the dichotomization variable. Conclusion. The results are clinically and significantly relevant, suggesting that low socioeconomic status measured both as educational level and SEA are no barriers for changing unhealthy lifestyle habits and decreasing cardiovascular risk after participation in a lifestyle program. Livsstilsmottagningen på Karolinska universitetssjukhuset, Solna

Lifestyle medicine domains, despite accounting for more than 78% of chronic disease risk, are infrequently taught as a part of the medical curriculum. Aspects such as nutrition are taught in less than 25% of medical schools, a statistic that continues to decline, and less than 20% of practicing physicians were required to take even a single course in exercise counseling during their medical school training. To combat this lack of training, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine annually awards the Donald A. Pegg scholarship to fund the development of Lifestyle Medicine Interest Groups (LMIGs) across medical schools worldwide. This scholarship was initiated in 2016 and utilizes private funds to support the development and expansion of LMIGs with the aim of increasing awareness of lifestyle medicine among training practitioners. There are four award winners per year. To date there are sixteen Pegg Award winners. This article will showcase the four 2019-2020 Donald A. Pegg award recipients and their impact on the LMIGs at their institutions. Furthermore, it highlights the ingenuity and adaptation of these LMIGs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the past 20 years, interest in mindfulness and its cultivation through various meditative practices has increased astronomically. This is reflected in the popularity of mindfulness training programs, its ever-widening exposure in popular culture, and in the number of scientific articles published on the topic. With the recent focus on burnout in the medical profession and reports of high levels of anxiety and depression among residents and staff physicians, the potential applications of mindfulness are becoming increasingly apparent in the hospital setting. Mindfulness meditation may be particularly useful for surgeons because they are required to maintain their presence of mind and mental focus in the setting of challenging physical and mental tasks. Furthermore, personality traits such as perfectionism and intensity, which may have facilitated success in the competitive environment of medical school and residency training, may later manifest as intolerance and impatience, contributing to frustration and anger. A mindfulness meditation practice may help reduce the tendency to react to these emotions, yet still allow surgeons to remain motivated to excel. This article provides a definition of mindfulness and describes its introduction to Western culture. The connection of a regular meditation practice to improvements in focus and performance are reviewed. The potential benefits of mindfulness training to a surgical career are discussed, and an approach to introducing mindfulness and meditation to individual surgeons and surgical departments is outlined. We hypothesize that the introduction of department-wide training programs in mindfulness and meditation could benefit surgeons with regard to technical performance, empathy toward patients, academic productivity, and general life and career satisfaction.

Traditional nutrition education in medical school has been inadequate to prepare future physicians to counsel patients on practical dietary changes that can prevent and treat food-related disease. Culinary medicine is being used to address this in a variety of settings, including medical education. The Teaching Kitchen Elective for Medical Students at Stanford University School of Medicine spans 1 academic quarter and combines hands-on cooking of food that is delicious and healthy, correlations with multiple clinical specialties, and role-playing real-life examples of brief dietary counseling with patients to make nutrition education practical and approachable. The course has been run as a quasi-randomized controlled study comparing 3 cohorts of students versus wait-listed controls via precourse and postcourse surveys. Preliminary analysis of the first cohort of students shows significant improvements in attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors around healthy cooking and meal planning for the students compared with controls. Despite these promising preliminary results, more resources are needed to be able to hold the course frequently enough to meet student demand.

Student-led Lifestyle Medicine Interest Groups (LMIGs) empower the next generation of healthcare professionals to tackle the pandemic of lifestyle-related chronic diseases and provide important pathways to increasing the visibility of Lifestyle Medicine (LM) in health professions schools. Each year, the Donald A. Pegg Student Leadership Award offers four allied health students a seed grant to start or support LMIGs at their schools as well as financial assistance to attend the annual American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) conference. The 2017 student winners were Paresh Jaini, Albert Barrera, Alyssa Greenwell, and Alicja Baska. With the support of the Pegg Award, the awardees and their faculty advisors have made great strides in LM at their institutions in the areas of research, community outreach, student education, and global networking. Their LMIG activities have included students presenting research at national conferences, initiating a chapter of the national organization Walk with a Doc, hosting educational lectures on LM principles, sponsoring plant-based cooking sessions, facilitating stress management workshops, and hosting a national-level LM congress in Europe. Through the ACLM, the Pegg Award generates an atmosphere of growth for LMIGs, fostering the expansion, vision, and integration of LM into the education of health professions students worldwide.

Stanford Medical School has created a class in lifestyle medicine that any student in the university can attend for credit. It is based on the foundational principles of lifestyle medicine and also informs students about topics such as Chinese medicine, naturopathic medicine, and wearable devices. The popularity of the course at Stanford speaks to the growing interest in the field of lifestyle medicine for medical students, undergraduate students, business students, and even engineers.