Advanced Lifestyle Medicine

Audience: Health and wellness professionals
Method: Online
Duration: 8 weeks
Graduate application: Not required
Credits: 2
Cost: $1,850

This course is held once per year in the fall. Enter your contact information, and we’ll let you know when the course is available.

What is lifestyle medicine?

Lifestyle medicine is the use of healthy lifestyle behaviors to prevent and treat chronic diseases. In this course, students will consider comprehensively applying lifestyle medicine strategies to healthy individuals, to those with chronic diseases and as part of a self-care program. Students will also consider lifestyle medicine as its own medical explanatory framework for disease, illness and health.

COURSE CREDIT
This is one of the courses within the Graduate Certificate in Lifestyle Medicine, and it’s worth 2 credits. The course can be taken independently as a professional development course or as part of the certificate program. Please note that students are limited to earning a maximum of nine graduate credits before applying for admission into a degree or certificate program. If you are below the nine-credit limit and are not seeking a certificate or degree, you’re free to take this course without applying to the graduate school.

Lifestyle medicine course objectives

By the end of this class, students will be able to:

• Compare and contrast lifestyle medicine and whole person health  
• Recall the current recommendations for physical activity, healthy eating, sleep and alcohol consumption 
• Describe the effects that lifestyle medicine can have on the prevention, management and reversal of certain chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity and heart disease
• Describe lifestyle medicine as its own medical explanatory framework for disease, illness and health
• Design and implement a self-care program

Meet your course instructor

This course is led by Tom Lenz, PharmD. Lenz is a professor at Creighton University in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies. A Creighton graduate, Lenz has taught at Creighton since 2001. His research and scholarship focus on self-care, employee well-being, lifestyle medicine, disease prevention, health promotion and online learning. He has authored a number of articles and several books, including “Lifestyle Medicine for Chronic Diseases.”

On his teaching philosophy, Lenz says, “After many years of working one-on-one with people to help guide them toward health and well-being, I have realized that each person’s circumstances and life journey is truly unique unto themselves, and yet we all share curiously similar commonalities. This realization has driven my research and teaching in recent years. My area of exploration and teaching centers on the core elements that lead to personal and collective well-being.” When he’s not teaching Lenz enjoys spending time with family outdoors doing activities like swimming, biking, running and water sports.

Student interactions and viewpoints are a vital part of our rich learning environment. For this reason, Creighton reserves the right to cancel courses and issue refunds in the case of low registration numbers.