What Lifestyle Medicine Reveals About Preventing Chronic Disease Spend

Much of the current high-cost category spend (claims) is preventable with PROACTIVE CARE, yet we often think of chronic diseases as solitary, separate, and unavoidable parts of the human condition when this isn't always true. In many cases, they are the result of multiple, interrelated, and self-imposed factors that can be influenced by reducing environmental exposures such as poor diet and sedentary behavior, where even small decreases can yield significant risk reduction and health gains—including in oncology. Getting populations to engage in healthier lifestyles requires combining a trusted and influential relationship with realistic, achievable interventions and clear financial implications for adherence or lack thereof, because the only way to drive engagement is to link hidden long-term physiological outcomes with obvious short-term financial ones. This approach is supported by emerging evidence showing that structured lifestyle interventions among adults with type 2 diabetes were associated with meaningful improvements in BMI, glycemic control, kidney function markers, and reduced risk of chronic kidney disease, reinforcing the power of proactive, behavior-focused strategies to prevent downstream high-cost conditions (Kadam et al., 2025).

Reference:

Kadam, N., et al. (2025). Effectiveness of lifestyle intervention in type 2 diabetes with chronic kidney disease. Paper presented at the American College of Lifestyle Medicine Conference, November 16–19, Dallas, TX. https://www.healio.com/news/nephrology/20251223/lifestyle-intervention-may-lower-ckd-risk-for-patients-with-type-2-diabetes