Developing a Health-Promoting Primary Care Clinic
Lilach MALATSKEY, ZICHRON YAAKOV, Rosália PÁSCOA, Snezana KNEZEVIC, Gokce ISCAN and Zhana OLCHOVA
Integrating Lifestyle Medicine (LM) into routine primary care remains a significant challenge. While patients often understand the benefits of healthy habits, translating this knowledge into sustained behavior change is difficult. Consequently, pharmacology often takes a predominant role in managing chronic diseases, despite robust evidence demonstrating that comprehensive lifestyle changes significantly reduce morbidity and mortality. This gap is further complicated by physician time constraints and lack of structured implementation strategies.This symposium aims to equip primary care physicians with a practical, step-by-step framework for transforming their practice into a Health-Promoting Clinic (HPC)—defined as a setting that actively facilitates healthy lifestyle behaviors for both its staff and patients. The objective is to provide attendees with a personalized methodology focused on phased implementation, team engagement, and measurable (SMART) goals.Introduction (5 minutes): Defining the Health-Promoting Clinic (HPC) and setting the stage for cultural transformation in primary care. Expert Presentation (30 minutes): Detailed presentation of the four-phased HPC transformation framework, including real-world examples: Situational Analysis, Team Engagement, Prioritization & Planning, and Implementation & Sustainability. Small-Group Work (10 minutes): Participants will collaborate to discuss how to perform a rapid Situational Analysis and apply the SMART model to prioritize goals and outline an executable action plan for their own clinics. Discussion and Wrap-up (10 minutes): Group sharing of initial ideas, final questions, and distribution of resources for continued learning.Attendees will be able to perform a rapid self-assessment of their current practice environment. They will gain tools for effective team engagement and champion recruitment and how to create a SMART action plan for initiating cultural transformation and embedding health promotion into their practice identityPrimary care physicians are uniquely positioned to lead robust lifestyle interventions. This session will provide attendees with the concrete tools, methods, and inspiration needed to initiate their own HPC transformation, ensuring that the commitment to health promotion is seamlessly embedded into the core identity of their clinical practice.
