Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q) will hold a two-day symposium on Lifestyle Medicine to discuss how lifestyle factors can be used to successfully treat and prevent chronic illnesses like diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
The symposium, which is open to healthcare professionals, researchers and educators, will explain how measures such as regular exercise, healthy nutrition, stress management, adequate sleep and avoidance of substance abuse can prevent, treat, and in some cases even reverse, chronic diseases.
Participants will learn how to perform a comprehensive evaluation of a patient’s health with reference to their lifestyle habits, how to provide effective guidance and prescriptions for nutrition and exercise, and how to utilise behavioural coaching methods to help patients maintain healthy lifestyle habits in the long term.
The two-day symposium will be held inside the WCM-Q campus at Education City, on 19 – 20 February. Titled ‘Lifestyle Medicine: An Emerging Healthcare Trend that Inspires’, the symposium is being coordinated by the WCM-Q Institute for Population Health and will feature a number of international Lifestyle Medicine experts as speakers.
Dr Ravinder Mamtani, Senior Associate Dean for Population Health, Capacity Building and Student Affairs, is a strong advocate of Lifestyle Medicine and has worked with collaborators in the US and Qatar.
Lifestyle Medicine focuses on promoting wellness by adopting healthy behaviours in all aspects of our lives, helping us to stay disease-free. This is extremely important in this era and in this region, where lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers are highly prevalent.’
Director of the WCM-Q Institute for Population Health Dr Sohaila Cheema, explained that Lifestyle Medicine is not just about prevention. She said that evidence shows that positive lifestyle changes can often also be used as effective treatments for some chronic diseases – for example, improving your diet can help treat or even reverse diabetes, and can help control heart disease by reducing unhealthy cholesterol levels.
It is important to note, however, that lifestyle medicine approaches are not meant to be substitutes for conventional treatments and patients should never stop taking medications or following treatments without speaking to their doctor.’
The course incorporates lectures and interactive workshops that will show participants how to tailor Lifestyle Medicine approaches to meet the individual needs of patients, such as how to prescribe exercise regimes and dietary changes appropriate to the age, health, fitness and body type of patients. Evidence base for Lifestyle Medicine interventions will also be examined and opportunities for implementing Lifestyle Medicine in healthcare will also be discussed.
The course is accredited locally by the Qatar Council for Healthcare Practitioners-Accreditation Department (QCHP-AD) and internationally by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME).
Visit qatar-weill.cornell.edu to register for the course and to know more about the symposium.