SHAREWhat is FirstLine Therapy? A proven personalized lifestyle medicine program that incorporates therapeutic lifestyle changes (TLC) such as healthy nutrition, nutritional protocols, exercise, and stress management.
Lifestyle Medicine: A New Standard for Managing Chronic Illness
Leading health organizations now recommend therapeutic lifestyle change and lifestyle medicine as the "first line of therapy" for treating and reducing the risk of common conditions such as:
- Overweight/Obesity
- High cholesterol
- High blood pressure
- Metabolic syndrome
- Type 2 diabetes
- Cardiovascular disease
- Osteoporosis
- Conditions related to aging
Lifestyle choices are also the key to addressing other health concerns and symptoms, such as:
- Fatigue
- Hormone imbalance
- Low sex drive
- Stress-related symptoms
- Poor memory or lack of mental clarity
- And many others
An Evidence-based Program for Any Clinical Setting
If you're like most health care providers, you lack the time, the tools, the training, or a practical financial model to allow you to give your patients the help they really need to make meaningful lifestyle changes.
That's why we developed the FirstLine Therapy Certification Program—to provide you with all the training and tools you need to implement a successful lifestyle medicine program in your clinical setting.
The FirstLine Therapy Certification Program
FirstLine Therapy is the only certification program to offer health care practitioners and physicians a complete, structured system to help reverse chronic illness through lifestyle medicine. This intensive 3 1/2 day training and certification is focused on metabolic syndrome. You'll learn how to:
- Integrate therapeutic lifestyle change counseling into your practice
- Create an effective clinic flow and staff organization
- Screen candidates and evaluate progress via key functional biomarkers and laboratory values
- Use bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) to monitor and motivate patients
- Teach patients healthy eating habits they can maintain for life
- Prescribe effective, research-based nutritional protocols
- Promote FirstLine Therapy in your community
Plus, you'll learn clinical implementation pearls from successful FirstLine Therapy practitioners.
This program is presented in an interactive format with components for physicians, licensed health care providers (with responsibility to prescribe TLC), and key staff members called Lifestyle Educators who will help educate, motivate, and monitor patients.
Guidelines for Lifestyle Educators
Who should register for the FLT Lifestyle Educator (LE) program?
The ideal lifestyle educator is someone who is already actively involved in the healthcare field interacting with patients. The FLT Lifestyle Educator program builds on existing work experience. To gain maximum value from participation, the person who is involved in teaching health-related topics, creating results-oriented programs and maintaining long term client relationships will find the information and experience an inspirational and useful addition to their career.
Other valuable skill sets include personal training, stress-management coaching, whole food cooking and knowledge in the area of dietary supplements. Participation in the FLT LE Program is an excellent way to advance your knowledge base and expand your job opportunities to work within the emerging lifestyle medicine movement. Possible two or four year healthcare-related degrees could be in nutrition, dietetics, exercise science, physiology, kinesiology, wellness, human biology, health coaching, nursing, health sciences, health counseling, health psychology and public health education Being a lifestyle educator is a new and exciting field in lifestyle medicine which can provide great satisfaction for someone with a passion for helping fight the chronic disease epidemic.
The FLT Lifestyle Educator Certification Program
As a participant, you will learn to use the ‘”FirstLine Therapy Tools” for the management of chronic disease. The training is not a curriculum but builds on existing knowledge of those who are already actively involved in patient healthcare relationships or health education or physical activity training. Lifestyle educators work under the supervision of a licensed healthcare provider who can diagnose and prescribe treatment.
We’ve created new minimum educational guidelines for those intending to enroll in order to help make your FirstLine Therapy program as successful as possible. Some breakout sessions provide advanced training, while others are designed for practitioners who are new to implementing therapeutic lifestyle change (TLC) programs.
Minimum Educational Guidelines for participation in the FLT Lifestyle Educator (LE) Program
- Introductory class in nutrition from an accredited learning institution
- Introductory class in anatomy & physiology from an accredited learning institution
- A two year degree from an accredited community college or its equivalent
Sponsorship by the hiring healthcare provider who is confident that the LE candidate has sufficient patient management and counseling experience to ensure clinical success of the program is acceptable. Please click here to download the online sponsorship request and submit.
Someone who does not meet the educational requirements but has acquired, in your opinion, sufficient work experience described above would fit the sponsorship criteria. Consider the following as essential for success: participation in a peer counseling, health coaching role, demonstrated ability to build trust and solve problems with patients. Additionally, familiarity with dietary supplements, healthy food preparation, personal training and/or therapist certifications fall into this realm.
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