Evidence-based implementation of lifestyle medicine in healthcare practice: a research agenda

In recent years, significant insights have been gathered into the effectiveness of lifestyle interventions in the treatment of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCD). To speed up the implementation of evidence-based lifestyle medicine, we developed a research agenda in collaboration with Dutch experts in treating NCD, using a hybrid Delphi approach. The research agenda focuses on four key themes: (1) promoting sustainable behavioural change at patient, healthcare professional and organisational levels; (2) optimising research designs, methodology and outcomes for the evaluation of effectiveness and implementation of lifestyle medicine modalities in healthcare practice; (3) elucidating biological mechanisms underlying successful lifestyle interventions and (4) advancing data infrastructure to ensure accessible data for citizens, healthcare professionals, researchers and health insurers for monitoring and evaluation of health and lifestyle outcomes. Collectively, the identified knowledge questions across these four themes provide guidance for (applied) research towards lifestyle medicine in healthcare.