Tricia Penniecook, M.D., M.P.H., dean of the School of Public Health, has been appointed to an additional role as director of the university's Lifestyle Medicine Institute. In this capacity, she hopes to unite the entire Loma Linda University enterprise--including eight professional schools, six hospitals, and a faculty physician practice group--to improve health in Southern California through lifestyle education.
"Lifestyle impacts any number of medical conditions. But it's also about prevention and sustaining the level of health necessary for living life to the fullest," she said. "My vision is that everyone on this campus recognize how lifestyle medicine can contribute to their success both as individuals and health care providers."
Richard Hart, M.D., Dr.P.H., university president, coordinated planning for the institute. "From its very inception, Loma Linda has espoused a healthy lifestyle for its faculty, staff, students, and patients," Dr. Hart stated in proposing the institute three years ago. "It is felt that the time has come for Loma Linda to refocus both its educational and service programs to more effectively promote the health principles for which it is so well known."
Dr. Penniecook envisions forming a unified whole out of the numerous separate avenues through which LLU has been promoting healthy lifestyle. She wants the Lifestyle Medicine Institute to meet the personal and professional needs of the university's students, faculty and staff, health care providers, and patients.
If an obese patient comes to a faculty physician office, for example, Dr. Penniecook would like that patient to receive a comprehensive kit of the various resources available across campus for helping individuals achieve a healthy weight.
She also envisions that the lifestyle efforts of the university's Diabetes Treatment Center, Center for Health Promotion, Drayson Center fitness facility, and cardiac rehabilitation services be offered to patients who come to Loma Linda, since they are an integral part of the Lifestyle Medicine Institute.
Furthermore, Dr. Penniecook hopes to more fully integrate lifestyle medicine concepts into the curriculum for students across this health-sciences university to the point that LLU graduates become known as versed in applying lifestyle principles to their particular health profession.
Since the creation of the Lifestyle Medicine Institute, the university has formed the administrative structures necessary to successfully run it, according to Wayne Dysinger, M.D., who directed the institute until stepping down in February 2011. This involved pulling together a large and diverse group of individuals across campus to form various working committees to help create and enact the institute's goals.
The groundwork has also been laid for a future Lifestyle Medicine Institute website, and a place for the institute to call home has been negotiated with the Drayson Center wellness facility, said Dr. Dysinger, who remains involved in the institute as associate director for clinical services.
"I'd like to see all physicians know the health habits of their patients," Dr. Dysinger said. "Many physicians, for example, don't know how their patients sleep or much about their diet."
One way that might happen is by incorporating lifestyle medicine tools into electronic medical records systems in order to make an individual's lifestyle habits easily accessible to health care providers across the LLU system. Other options include cooperating with an established nationwide lifestyle turnaround program, such as the well-regarded Coronary Health Improvement Project (CHIP), to offer its programming more regularly on the Loma Linda campus.
Also helping to lead the Lifestyle Medicine Institute is Serena Tonstad, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., professor of health promotion and education, as well as preventive care. She serves as associate director for research.
One of the hoped-for values of having a diverse group of individuals across campus involved in the institute is so that areas traditionally sepa- rate on campus can find ways to work together.
During a recent meeting, for example, Dr. Tonstad and Olivia Moses, Dr.P.H., director of the employee wellness program, brainstormed the idea of how the areas of lifestyle research and employee wellness could work together to mutually benefit the aims of both.
This story was originally published in the May 25, 2011, edition of Today.