Despite overwhelming evidence that sleep, nutrition, and physical activity are foundational to the prevention and treatment of a wide range of diseases, including diabetes, autoimmune disorders, migraine, chronic kidney disease, etc., these lifestyle strategies remain underrepresented in medical school curricula. Here we present a course design for a 1-credit-hour, 40-contact-hour elective course for second- and third-year osteopathic medical students focused on the physiology of sleep, diet, and exercise and how to use them in clinical scenarios. The course is designed to be taught concurrently with regular learning objectives focusing on neuroscience, endocrinology, hematology, renal physiology, etc. emphasizing mechanistic links between lifestyle factors and pathophysiology. The course includes practical discussions on how to prescribe evidence-based lifestyle changes and patient-centered behavior change strategies. The learning objectives are assessed using boards-style multiple choice questions and faculty evaluation using a prospective, single-arm interventional design with pre-/post-testing and delayed (3–6 month) follow-up. Primary outcomes include: (1) knowledge acquisition (30-item multiple-choice examination), (2) clinical application competency (two standardized patient-based OSCE stations requiring lifestyle prescription), (3) self-efficacy in lifestyle counseling (validated case study with a 10-item scale), and (4) performance on related NBME/COMLEX-style shelf and COMLEX-2 customized question bank items. Secondary outcomes comprise student-generated lifestyle treatment plans for complex virtual cases scored by blinded faculty using a 20-point rubric and student course evaluations. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2026 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.
Jackson et al. (2026) studied this question.