Transforming healthcare and levelling health inequalities through lifestyle medicine
BSLM is a community of healthcare professionals and patients, committed to a new approach to healthcare, based on the emerging discipline of lifestyle medicine.
Lifestyle Medicine is evidence-based, clinical care that supports behaviour change through person-centered techniques to improve mental wellbeing, social connection, healthy eating, physical activity, sleep and minimisation of harmful substances and behaviours.
Ensuring lifestyle medicine education gets to those that need it the most is critical, but education alone is not enough to create sustainable lifestyle changes. There are various skills that have proven to be successful in supporting patients in this regard.
Lifestyle medicine calls for a move away from the traditional doctor-patient relationship where the clinician is the expert information provider. This is needed because we now know that giving simple lifestyle advice such as “eat less and move more” is often ineffective1 2
To be effective in supporting lifestyle change, lifestyle medicine uses knowledge of behavioural science to work with patients. This way we can work with people and their values to support problem solving and equip them with skills to make the changes they want to make. Some of these techniques have been shown to be at least 80% more effective in supporting behaviour change than traditional advice giving 3
Our members include primary and secondary care clinicians, allied and public health professionals, scientists, educators, researchers and patients.
We’re united by a shared commitment to lifestyle medicine, as an effective, evidence-informed approach to preventing, managing and treating lifestyle-related chronic conditions.
We want to reframe healthcare to focus on the lifestyle factors which are the root cause of most chronic illnesses. We support positive behaviour change and improved public health education.
We also believe change is needed at the societal level – to address the ‘upstream’ causes of chronic, lifestyle-related disease such as deprivation, health inequality, social isolation and a lack of hope.
We are an independent, charitable organisation with no religious or political affiliations.
All our work is driven by science and informed by evidence.
Available to BSLM Members in our monthly series, register for the next upcoming webinar, bringing in two new speakers exploring the evidence-based world with lifestyle medicine
For over 40 years, the British Society for Ecological Medicine (BSEM) has championed the role of nutritional interventions in managing mental health. The Public Health Collaboration echoes this sentiment, advocating for dietary strategies that underpin metabolic health. This October, these two pioneering organisations join forces to host a landmark conference.
Midwife Toni Martin and GP Jessica Harris will be joined by Ellen Devine from Forestry England to discuss the benefits of getting active in nature and how patients with long term conditions can access resources which meet their needs
Lifestyle Medicine Podcasts
Explore the different Lifestyle Medicine podcasts available through BSLM