Plant-Based Lifestyle “Recipe” Expands to 20 Big Apple Hospitals

New York City is expanding its plant-based lifestyle health program, making an effort to train the New York City health care workforce under this model. 20 public and private hospitals.

So this Monday Mayor Eric Adams announced a partnership with the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) to offer free introductory nutrition training to all healthcare professionals in the Big Apple, to treat certain health conditions.

“A plant-based diet restored my eyesight. It put my type 2 diabetes into remission. And it helped save my life”, reiterated the municipal president when announcing the investment of $44 million program that will be available to 200,000 city workers.

“We are investing in a new healthy model to face chronic diseases and health disparities”, Adams finished.

Lifestyle medicine is a medical specialty that uses changes in eating patterns to treat chronic conditions, including cardiovascular diseases, hypertension and type 2 diabetes.

Physicians certified in this discipline are trained to apply changes in eating habitsbased on scientific evidence, to treat and in some cases achieve, without the administration of drugs, the remission of certain common chronic conditions.

The pillars of this “lifestyle”

This lifestyle medicine is based in a healthy eating pattern with a predominance of plantsphysical activity, restful sleep, stress management, removal from dangerous substances and positive social connections.

The initial phase of this training plan will include doctors, nurses, dietitians, and other health professionals.

The training opportunity will include 5.5 hours of self-paced online coursesavailable for one year.

“As a practicing physician, I know that making lifestyle changes can do much more for my patients living with chronic illnesses than many medications. And as a public health leader and epidemiologist, I know that healthy lifestyles are the best way to prevent the onset of diseases. Which, in turn, prevents untold suffering,” he said. dr. Ashwin Vasan the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH).

This initiative arises in the midst of staggering impacts of chronic disease in the United States and in New York City.

For example, 60% of American adults have already been diagnosed with one chronic disease, with an estimated 40% diagnosed with two or more, and more than 100 million adults, almost half of the entire adult population in the country have prediabetes or diabetes.

Nationwide, cardiovascular disease affects approximately 122 million people and cause approximately 840,000 deaths each year, or about 2,300 deaths each day.

Overall diet quality is the leading cause of premature death in the United States, causing some 500,000 deaths every year.

“In recent years, we have asked a lot of our hospitals. They had to treat COVID-19 patients, implement vaccinations, and detect mpox. All of these have been acute challenges. Now let’s give back and invest now in our healthcare professionals to help combat health inequalities in every community”, reasoned Anne Williams-IsomDeputy Mayor for Health and Human Services.

The weight of diagnoses

About one in four black or Hispanic New Yorkers is obese. This group is three times more likely to die from diabetes or its complications than white New Yorkers.

This announcement has a special repercussion for the Hispanic and African-American communities in New York City, disproportionately affected by these pathologies, which according to scientific approaches they are triggered mostly by bad eating habits.

According to data that has been collecting for more than a decade the American Diabetes Association at its New York chapter, of 28% of those diagnosed with this disease in the Big Apple are Hispanic and 31% are African American.

In a very detailed balance carried out in 2007, it was put in the focus of the authorities that 23 Hispanics out of 100,000 peopledied from complications associated with diabetes.

Since its launch at Bellevue Hospital three years ago, the plant-based medicine program has received national attention. Since the beginning of 2022, the Municipal Administration began its expansion to several public hospitals and now it tries to spread it to the entire health system.

“Educating our health personnel is a first step to combat these health disparities. We look forward to partnering with the City to continue to reduce barriers and stigmas to achieving health equity.” Virginia Fields, President and CEO of the National Commission on Black Leadership on Health.

The data:

• 27% of medical schools in the United States they offer the required 25 hours of nutrition education in their programs. The training that will be offered to the New York health worker will help raise the level of education in this discipline in all medical areas, providing new hope to patients battling common chronic diseases, specified the City in a statement.