Health Promotion and Disease Prevention for Advanced Practice: Integrating Evidence-Based Lifestyle Concepts

Loureen Downes, PhD, APRN, FNP-BC, DipACLM, FAANP, NBC-HWC, is a Conner Professor in Nursing and the founding Program Director of the Doctor of Nursing Practice Program at Florida Gulf Coast University. She has a master’s degree in nursing from Florida Atlantic University and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Connecticut. As a clinician, Dr. Downes is a board-certified family nurse practitioner, a diplomate of lifestyle medicine, and a health and wellness coach. As a professor, she enjoys teaching nurse practitioner students to use lifestyle as first-line treatment or as an adjunct to traditional treatment regimens. One of her favorite courses to teach is Advanced Health Promotion. Her passion and research interest is to improve dietary habits and physical activity to decrease risk factors for preventable chronic diseases. She frequently contributes to her community and faith-based organization by delivering presentations on preventing and managing chronic diseases through lifestyle behaviors. Her notable research accomplishment includes developing an instrument, the Motivators, and the Barriers of Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors Scale, used nationally and internationally. Dr. Downes is the author of several peer-reviewed articles and has presented regionally, nationally, and internationally on lifestyle behaviors. Lilly Tryon, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, DipACLM, NBCHWC, ACSM-EP, is a professor at the Southern Adventist University School of Nursing. She has a master’s degree in nursing (Drexel University), a doctorate in nursing practice with an emphasis inlifestyle medicine (Southern Adventist University), and holds certifications in lifestyle medicine, health and wellness coaching, plant-based nutrition, and exercise physiology.As a professor, Dr. Tryon focuses onexpanding the use of lifestyle medicine inadvanced practice nursing. She teaches courses in advanced health promotion,lifestyle medicine, nutrition, culinary medicine, exercise, and health coaching andoften uses the analogy of a tour guide (as opposed to a travel agent) toencouragestudents to go beyond prescribing and coach their patients to take realistic,evidence-based, andsustainable steps for preventing, managing, and reversingchronic disease. Dr. Tryon is a board-certified family nurse practitioner with over 35 years of nursing experience in lifestyle medicine and community health. She practices part-time at LifeMed, a direct primary care and lifestyle medicine practice in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she focuses on using lifestyle as medicine in addressing the healthcare needs of her patients. She is also a strong advocate of faith-based health ministry and has developed training workshops and materials for using a coaching approach in church health outreach programs.