{"id":14890,"date":"2023-09-13T14:33:34","date_gmt":"2023-09-13T14:33:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifestylemedicine.org\/?p=14890"},"modified":"2023-10-17T20:37:48","modified_gmt":"2023-10-17T20:37:48","slug":"aclm-advocacy-priorities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifestylemedicine.org\/articles\/aclm-advocacy-priorities\/","title":{"rendered":"ACLM Advocacy Priorities in Support of its Members and Lifestyle Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"

ACLM Advocacy Priorities in Support of its Members and Lifestyle Medicine<\/h1>\n

By Jean Tips, Sr. Director of Communications & Public Affairs<\/p>\n

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One year after the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, we take a look at ACLM’s advocacy efforts on behalf of our members since we began that work in 2019. Our priority areas of focus are lifestyle medicine in medical education; reimbursement and quality measures; health equity as it relates to lifestyle-related chronic disease health disparities; and military health for recruits and active-duty personnel.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div><\/div>

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ACLM Sr. Director of Communications and Public Affairs Jean Tips, Past-President Dr. Dexter Shurney, and Executive Director Susan Benigas shown in their first visit to Capitol Hill in 2019.<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Included in the wide array of American College of Lifestyle Medicine\u2019s member benefits is ACLM\u2019s bipartisan advocacy work on Capitol Hill in support of the integration of lifestyle medicine as the foundation of healthcare and, more specifically, to support our members in their clinical practices. We began our advocacy activities in 2019, initially focused on introductions and orientations with key Congressional members and staff, as well as key representatives of federal agencies such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).<\/p>\n

As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, ACLM is a tax-exempt entity that is prohibited from engaging in certain types of political activities such as lobbying. However, we can work to influence and provide critical background for federal stakeholders involved in areas of public policy and issues that affect our work.\u00a0 Over the past four years, our priorities have remained the same: 1) advance lifestyle medicine, including food as medicine, in medical and other health professional education, 2) remove reimbursement barriers and improve quality measure misalignment, 3) improve military health as a matter of national security and military preparedness, and 4) foster health equity by addressing lifestyle-related chronic disease health disparities.<\/p>\n

We have executed our work with the deft on-the-ground assistance in D.C. of health policy consultants Alston and Bird.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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ACLM LMEd partner Jennifer Trilk, Past-President Dr. Cate Collings, and Physical Activity Alliance partners Graham Melstrand and Laurie Whitsel participated in last year's White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health.<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Our ongoing work to date has included a variety of tactics:<\/p>\n