A new peer-reviewed paper is urging healthcare professionals to treat meaning, purpose, and spirituality as central elements of lifestyle medicine. The publication argues that these factors are not just optional but play a direct role in helping patients adopt and maintain healthier behaviors.
The paper, titled "Meaning, Purpose, and Spirituality in the Clinical Practice of Lifestyle Medicine," was developed after a 2025 national summit organized by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) along with the Global Positive Health Institute. The event was funded by the Ardmore Institute of Health and brought together nearly 100 experts to turn research findings into practical clinical recommendations.
The authors reviewed evidence showing that meaning, purpose, and spirituality—often referred to as MPS—are linked to healthier habits, greater psychological resilience, improved well-being, and lower risk of death. While organizations like the Joint Commission and the American Medical Association have recognized spirituality as an important part of care, these aspects are still not consistently included in regular medical practice.
To address this gap, the paper presents practical strategies for integrating MPS into healthcare settings. These include using tools to take a brief spiritual history from patients, adopting whole-person care frameworks, and creating team-based workflows that incorporate MPS into patient intake forms, documentation processes, follow-up visits, and group medical appointments. The authors stress that discussions about meaning and spirituality should be led by patients themselves and handled with cultural sensitivity and compassion. Additional resources for applying these strategies are available in an accompanying toolkit.
The paper also calls for changes at the system level. Recommendations include adjusting reimbursement models to support this approach, developing metrics to measure its impact, and expanding training for clinicians on whole-person care. The authors note that ACLM's recent update to its lifestyle medicine connectedness pillar opens up opportunities for including spirituality within standard care models.
This article is one of four published in a special issue of the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. Together they examine how integrating meaning, purpose, and spirituality affects clinical outcomes, implementation practices, education programs for future clinicians, and clinician well-being.
"This special issue comprehensively addresses the value of understanding meaning, purpose, and spirituality on healthcare, in implementing it for better clinical care and clinician well-being, and integrating it into medical education to build the knowledge and skills of future professionals," said ACLM Senior Director of Research and Quality Micaela Karlsen, PhD, MSPH. "Clinicians don't just want to see their patients survive; they want to see them thrive, and to do that they need to understand all drivers of the individual's health."
