American College of Lifestyle Medicine Adds Virtual Group Health Coaching Groundbreaker HealCommunity™ to its Lifestyle Medicine Corporate Roundtable

USA - English

• USA - English

ST. LOUIS, Jan. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) has announced the addition of virtual group health coaching service HealCommunity to its Lifestyle Medicine Corporate Roundtable, a group of thought leaders and industry professionals who explore effective clinical innovations and active marketing strategies, accelerate reimbursement and policy adoption, and pursue research and demonstrations of lifestyle medicine in practice. ACLM launched its Corporate Roundtable in 2016 and it now includes more than 40 active member organizations in the lifestyle medicine ecosystem.

Lifestyle medicine is defined as the use of evidence-based lifestyle therapeutic intervention—including a whole-food, plant-predominant eating pattern, regular physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances, and positive social connection—as a primary modality, delivered by clinicians trained and certified in this specialty, to prevent, treat, and often reverse chronic disease.

HealCommunity delivers a comprehensive, turnkey virtual group coaching program to support clinics and health systems in delivering evidence-based lifestyle medicine and support patient behavior change. Each episode of care is led by a board-certified health coaching team, includes a provider, and is billable to commercial and government insurance. Groups run in length from three to six months in partnership with clinics, hospitals, ACOs and health systems.

HealCommunity was founded in response to an awareness that doctors and other clinicians knew their patients needed lifestyle medicine treatments, yet they lacked the time, money, and expertise to design and implement them plus support critical behavior change. HealCommunity provides a new health care delivery model that allows doctors to focus on the medical needs of patients while the groups provide high-touch behavior modification support.

HealCommunity founders James Maskell, author of "The Community Cure," a book on the power of the group care model in chronic illness reversal, and Barclay Burns, previous founder of Learning.com whose doctoral thesis at Cambridge examined reversing chronic illnesses, had been working independently to solve for the epidemic of chronic illness that plagues modern health. With the advent of the global Sars CoV-2 pandemic in 2020, the two entrepreneurs got to work designing, building and rolling out a virtual care model that would allow patients to experience real change in health outcomes through behavior modification.

Patients quarantined at home were experiencing weight gain, isolation-related anxieties and increased stress levels. These factors made HealCommunity a critical offering for practitioners who desperately recognized that the roots of chronic illness had found fertile ground in the new pandemic way of life. Doctors all over the U.S. recognized that offering their patients HealCommunity was a way to help them control and change destructive health behaviors.

HealCommunity's initial cohorts have significantly improved their stress, anxiety and sleep quality, as well as fatigue and chronic pain.

"At a time when implementing anything new is trickier than ever, we are making the delivery of lifestyle medicine both frictionless and scalable so we can truly move the needle on health outcomes together. HealCommunity is thrilled to be part of the ACLM's Corporate Roundtable," said HealCommunity Co-Founder James Maskell.

"HealCommunity leverages the power of community to make it easier for patients to make important behavior changes that improve their health," said ACLM President Cate Collings, MD, MS, FACC, DipABLM. "Delivering care in groups also reduces the burden of implementation for the clinic, improves outcomes and reduces clinician burnout and fatigue. We welcome HealCommunity to our Corporate Roundtable."

ABOUT HEALCOMMUNITY-- With its aim to reverse and prevent chronic illness for all people, HealCommunity delivers a comprehensive, turnkey solution to support clinics and health systems in delivering evidence-based lifestyle medicine. By delivering care in groups, HealCommunity leverages the power of community to make it easier for patients to make important behavior changes that impact downstream health. The all-virtual service creates access to this new standard of care via commercial and government insurance. Reducing the burden of implementation for the clinic improves outcomes and reduces clinician burnout and fatigue, while also extending their clinical leadership. Based in Folsom, CA, HealCommunity was founded in 2020 and now delivers group care ranging in length from three to six months in partnership with a range of partners from clinics to hospitals, ACOs and health systems.

ABOUT THE AMERICAN COLLEGE OF LIFESTYLE MEDICINE: ACLM is the medical professional society for those dedicated to the advancement and clinical practice of lifestyle medicine as the foundation of a transformed and sustainable health care system. Lifestyle medicine is the use of evidence-based lifestyle therapeutic intervention—including a whole-food, plant-predominant eating pattern, regular physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances, and positive social connection—as a primary modality, delivered by clinicians trained and certified in this specialty, to prevent, treat, and often reverse chronic disease.

More than a professional association, ACLM is a galvanized force for change. ACLM addresses the need for quality education and certification, supporting its members in their individual practices and in their collective mission to domestically and globally promote Lifestyle Medicine as the first treatment option, as opposed to a first option of treating symptoms and consequences with expensive, ever-increasing quantities of pills and procedures.

Media Contact

Jean Tips, American College of Lifestyle Medicine, 971-983-5383 x 119, [email protected]

SOURCE American College of Lifestyle Medicine