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Family physicians provide care throughout patients’ lifetimes. They are typically the first and continuing point of contact for access to health services, support, and care, and they often deliver preventive care based on the effects of lifestyle choices on the health of their patients. An increasing number of people are developing preventable chronic conditions like hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.

Klein D, Humphries S, Kallio M, Madiha M. Program Description: CHANGE Exercise Intervention for Primary Care. Canadian Family Physician.

To describe the dietary, exercise, smoking, and alcohol use habits among physician faculty to determine if physician lifestyle behaviour is related to attitudes about and practices of patient lifestyle counseling.

E-health has been touted as the “single-most important revolution in healthcare since the advent of modern medicine, vaccines or even public health measures like sanitation and clean water”. Common areas of e-health include telemedicine, electronic patient records, computer-assisted surgery, and monitoring systems that are portable and/or wearable such as activity trackers. Some primary care physicians are engaging patients in self-monitoring, and goal setting through the use of novel e-health technologies. In 2013, wearable health-tracking technologies generated over US $1.6 billion, a number which is expected to rise to US $5 billion by 2016.

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) refers to a particular cluster of metabolic abnormalities (hypertension, dyslipidemia, type 2 diabetes, and visceral fat deposition) that can lead to a 1.5- to 2-fold increased relative risk of cardiovascular disease. Various combinations of healthier eating patterns and increased physical activity have been shown to improve metabolic abnormalities and reduce MetS prevalence.

The aim of the Building on Existing Tools to Improve Chronic Disease Prevention and Screening in Family Practice (BETTER) randomized controlled trial is to improve the primary prevention of and screening for multiple conditions (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer) and some of the associated lifestyle factors (tobacco use, alcohol overuse, poor nutrition, physical inactivity). In this article, we describe how we harmonized the evidence-based clinical practice guideline recommendations and patient tools to determine the content for the BETTER trial.

Have you ever wondered if a family physician can actually influence patients to adopt lifestyle changes? To find this out, we conducted a small project based in our family practice in Edmonton, Alta. The results might surprise you.