An Exploration of Lifestyle Medicine Programs for Undergraduate Medical Education: A Scoping Review

Background: Lifestyle Medicine (LM) education offers potential benefits for medical students for improving medical students’ health and clinical knowledge/skills. However, since LM education has not been consistently integrated into undergraduate medical education, there is a need to better understand the current literature about LM programs, including their characteristics, reporting, and application. Methods: A search of multiple databases yielded 7674 articles from 2012 to 2024. Handsearching of reference lists and extraction from review articles yielded 82 additional articles. Two hundred and five articles met the inclusion criteria. LM programs were assessed in relation to their context, dose and intensity, delivery, and outcomes. Results: The characteristics of LM programs varied considerably. LM programs generally focused on one pillar, specifically nutrition and substance use, and were often taught by interprofessional teams using multiple pedagogical strategies. Studies typically assessed outcomes at Levels 1 and 2 of the Kirkpatrick models of evaluation. Important limitations were identified in both the reporting quality, particularly the lack of demographic and costs, as well as the strength of study designs, like focus on short-term outcomes. Conclusions: To enhance the quality of LM programs, future work can adopt holistic approaches to LM and examine sustainability of LM programs in diverse contexts.