Resources
Ardmore Institute of Health (AIH) seeks to help establish Lifestyle Medicine and Whole Person Care as integral components of the delivery of care in the US healthcare system. We equip clinicians and health professionals with the resources needed to bring lifestyle medicine into the mainstream of clinical practice.
Not a clinician but interested in Lifestyle Medicine and Whole Person Care? These resources are valuable for you too.
Featured Resources
Shared Medical Appointment Program
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The SMA model, also known as group medical visits, has grown in popularity over the past three decades as a novel care delivery strategy for clinicians to see multiple patients at once, leveraging the power and efficiency of groups. In this program, you’ll learn more about the best practices for implementing SMAs, resources available to make the SMA delivery easier, and the Full Plate Living approach to improve nutrition and overall health.
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Share Full Plate Living with your patients and bill insurance for your time. We have an 8-session, 4-session, and 1-session program available, and we provide all the needed materials. What you'll get:
Program slide decks
Provider documentation note template
Provider implementation guide
Access to a recorded webinar on: Implementing Shared Medical Appointments
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CME: Implementing Shared Medical Appointments Utilizing Full Plate Living
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This AAFP credit system approved CME is offered free of cost by AIH to support physicians in implementing shared medical appointments (SMA) utilizing Full Plate Living.
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When you register for the CME, you will learn:
Best practices for implementing a SMA
Resources available to make delivering a SMA easier
The Full Plate Living approach to improve nutrition and health
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Facilitator Training
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The Full Plate Living Facilitator Training is a seven-module certification, designed to equip you to facilitate a Full Plate Living Group Program or Shared Medical Appointment Program.
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In this training, we’ll teach you everything you need to know to run one of our programs.
The Full Plate Living Healthy Lifestyle Program is an 8-session nutrition program perfect for hosting groups in-person or online. Anyone passionate about helping others improve their health can facilitate it.
The Shared Medical Appointment program is designed for clinician use. It’s an opportunity for providers or their staff to help several patients at once and potentially be reimbursed by insurance for the time spent.
Not sure which program is right for you? Not a problem. You’ll learn about both in the Facilitator Training.
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Full Plate Living Group Program
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Full Plate Living is a free service of AIH that offers a simple and sustainable approach to healthy living, empowering individuals to achieve lasting well-being. Full Plate Living helps people add more whole, unprocessed fiber foods to their existing diet. This approach promotes achievable lifestyle changes that can lead to increased energy levels, lower cholesterol, improved blood sugar control, and weight loss.
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Full Plate Living is grounded in extensive research and is one of only a few programs certified by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM).
Identify a member of your staff to lead a weekly group meeting (in person or virtually) where patients can experience the Full Plate Living program live. We provide all of the materials you need.
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Full Plate Living Online Program
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Full Plate Living is a free service of AIH that offers a simple and sustainable approach to healthy living, empowering individuals to achieve lasting well-being. Full Plate Living helps people add more whole, unprocessed fiber foods to their existing diet. This approach promotes achievable lifestyle changes that can lead to increased energy levels, lower cholesterol, improved blood sugar control, and weight loss.
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Full Plate Living is grounded in extensive research and is one of only a few programs certified by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM). If you are a clinician looking to support your patients, you can easily refer your patients to our free online program by:
Including information in your after-visit summary
Sending them home with a prescription to learn more or a patient education handout
Displaying a poster or tabletop display in your practice (we’ll mail them to you)
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Culinary Medicine Textbook, 2025 Edition
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This peer-reviewed textbook, developed by the University of Arizona, is designed for individuals and communities interested in advancing Whole Health through the implementation of food-based disease prevention programs.
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This free resource provides a comprehensive introduction to culinary medicine and includes case studies and information on kitchen skills, food safety, menu planning, shopping and budgeting, popular diets, dietary supplements, food demonstrations, seed-to-table programs, community partnerships, and culturally centered approaches.
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CME: Religion and Spirituality in Lifestyle Medicine
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Religion and Spirituality in Lifestyle Medicine (AJLM Vol. 19, Issue 2) was published in 2024 and co-authored by AIH President and CEO. It presents a faith-practice framework to support Lifestyle Medicine practitioners in integrating religion/spirituality into their patient-centered care.
This CME provides the article and one quiz for 1 CME/CE credit.
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Decades of research now support the positive relationship of religion/spirituality (R/S) with physical health, mental health, morbidity, and mortality. While lifestyle medicine (LM) practitioners often recognize R/S as important, they can face common challenges of how to integrate R/S into their holistic, patient-centered care. To help, this article presents a faith-practice framework, as a starting point for considering incorporating R/S into LM practice—in light of common concerns and challenges, as a guide for patient-centered care through adjusting lifestyle prescriptions to accommodate individualized R/S beliefs and practices for improved health behavior and outcomes, and as an encouragement to stimulate openness for positive, thoughtful discussion into the future of R/S in LM practice and research.
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Lifestyle Medicine Implementation Guide
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With grant support from AIH, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) created an implementation guide to aid physicians in incorporating the principles of Lifestyle Medicine into their practices.
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Family physicians are ideally positioned to champion and prescribe Lifestyle Medicine and work collaboratively with community health professionals to help patients sustain healthy behaviors over time.
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Reimbursement Resources and Shared Medical Appointments Toolkit
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The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) put together this collection of resources which includes:
A Shared Medical Appointment Toolkit
A Reimbursement Roadmap
A Literature Review on Medical Payment Models Alignment with Lifestyle Medicine
A Independent Primary Care Practice Roadmap
A Matrix on Medical Payment Models’ Alignment With Lifestyle Medicine
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Lifestyle Medicine Shared Medical Appointments (LMSMAs) are a model of health care delivery that can address the challenges posed by chronic disease by improving access to care, reducing cost to patients and hospitals, reducing provider burnout and improving clinical outcomes.
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Lifestyle Medicine Patient Education Handouts
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AIH and the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) developed patient education handouts (in English and Spanish) with more information on Lifestyle Medicine and 6 areas to improve health.
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These handouts are an easy way to introduce patients to Lifestyle Medicine and Full Plate Living, a free nutrition service of AIH.
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Community Engaged Lifestyle Medicine Resources
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With grant support from AIH, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) rolled out a series of new lifestyle medicine resources for physicians on diabetes care, healthy eating, and youth suicide prevention. Resources include a nutrition guide, physician and patient packets, a health assessment, and educational sessions.
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These resources are designed to assist physicians in discussing healthy lifestyle options with patients and integrating lifestyle medicine into clinical practice.
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Value-based Care, Plant-based Nutrition, and Lifestyle Medicine Training
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Plantrician University equips and empowers future physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, registered dietitians, public health officials, and other healthcare professionals in training, with the knowledge and tools they need to become advocates and educators for the evidence-based role of plant-based nutrition to prevent and dramatically reduce rates of chronic disease, grow health equity, and improve human and global health.
Seed funding for Plantrician University was provided in part by AIH.
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Plantrician University is free to confirmed health profession students/faculty and clinicians in training around the world. Plantrician University believes the next generation of clinicians has the potential to usher in a new era of healthcare founded on the principles of value-based care, plant-based nutrition and lifestyle medicine.
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With support from AIH, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) sponsored this supplement to The Journal of Family Practice. The supplement includes:
Introductory information on the definition of Lifestyle Medicine’s 6 pillars
How Lifestyle Medicine delivery is influenced by key determinants of health
How Lifestyle Medicine is being used to prevent, treat, and sometimes reverse multiple types of chronic disease
A peek into the current practice of Lifestyle Medicine
What the future holds in education and policy
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The urgent need to treat the root cause of lifestyle-related chronic disease led to the creation of this supplement. The goal is to provide family physicians with information on all aspects of Lifestyle Medicine.
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Supplement: A Family Physician's Introduction to Lifestyle Medicine
CME: Improving Provider Health & Happiness
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With grant support from AIH, Mass General Brigham (a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate) offers this free, 8-module CME to improve provider health and happiness and reduce burnout.
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Healthy and happy providers are best able to model and promote sustainable healthy behaviors to patients. Upon completion of this CME, participants will be able to:
Identify trends in clinician burnout
Employ evidence-based strategies to increase well-being
Utilize evidence-based guidelines for exercise, nutrition, sleep, stress reduction & social connection
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The Spiritual Assessment
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The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) offers the spiritual assessment as an opportunity to enhance the patient-physician relationship and incorporate patient views that may have a significant impact on clinical decision-making.
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The physician-patient relationship is at the foundation of every interaction in family medicine, and multiple studies demonstrate significant relationships between spiritual interventions and improved mental and physical health outcomes.
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CME: Lifestyle Medicine and Food as Medicine Essentials
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The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) offers this free, 5.5-hour CME to introduce clinicians to the therapeutic use of Lifestyle Medicine. The course focuses on the most challenging pillar to address and the leading cause of many chronic issues – food.
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This course will help clinicians understand how food can be medicine, how to become a role model of health, and how to embrace a future where sick care no longer drives clinical decisions.
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Personal Health Inventory and Circle of Health Handouts
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The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs utilizes Whole Health to support well-being. They created the Personal Health Inventory handout to help patients think about their whole health and the Circle of Health handout to educate patients on the components of proactive health.
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Clinicians seeking to engage their patients in small-habit-adoption/behavior-change strategies like Full Plate Living can use these resources to connect with their patients' purpose and readiness to change. Begin asking "What matters to you?" instead of "What is the matter with you?"
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Lifestyle Medicine CME & MOC
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The American Medical Association (AMA) offers this online CME & MOC course to help physicians integrate wellness and lifestyle factors into their practice. Topics include Foundational Lifestyle Medicine, Prevention and Management of Cardiovascular Disease, Exercise and Physical Activity, Lifestyle Interventions to Prevent Cancers, Mental Health, and Physician Wellness & Reducing Burnout.
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This course equips physicians to coach patients more effectively. Physicians will better understand how improved intake of healthy food and nutrition, increased physical activity, obesity, weight and stress management, sleep, social support, and limiting certain environmental exposures all play a role in affecting overall health.
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