Creating an integrative health team: How to tailor an integrative health program to prevent chronic disease in low-income communities

To create a successful integrative health team, an important, yet often neglected, aspect is to engage the team in developing an awareness of the targeted population’s health and the surrounding environment (Healthography). The Canyon Ranch Institute Life Enhancement Program (CRI LEP) directly engages community members in identifying the unique socioeconomic health factors in their lives and their community through formative research. Those findings are infused throughout a training process for the CRI LEP integrative health core team made up of qualified health professionals in nutrition, fitness, medicine, spirituality, behavioral health, and stress management. These professionals already live and work in the community, usually at a traditional health care provider, and are trained in integrative health and forged into a truely integrative health team focusing on preventing chronic disease. The CRI LEP and the training of the core team is, thus, tailored to each community. The core team uses that awareness of place and culture to improve participants’ health literacy so they are able to make informed decisions about their own, their family’s, and their community’s health and well-being. Using this process, which the presentation will detail, the CRI LEP has been successfully implemented at six diverse locations across the United States. Evaluation shows a broad range of statistically significant and positive health outcomes reflecting the integrative health approach, including a 32% reduction in cholesterol levels and blood pressure, 50% reduction in stress and depression, 40% increase in healthful eating, 46% increase in physical activity, and 22% increase in health literacy.