Furthering the Field of Lifestyle Medicine Through the Donald A. Pegg Student Leadership Award

Lifestyle medicine focuses on six pillars: a predominantly whole food, plant-based dietary pattern, physical activity, stress management, avoidance of risky substances, sleep, and positive social connection. Lifestyle medicine has been shown to be effective in treating heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and hypertension, among others. Despite these data, lifestyle medicine education amongst medical schools continues to be inadequate. Lifestyle Medicine Interest Groups (LMIGs) are student-led organizations which work to fill the gap in lifestyle medicine education by holding a variety of programming for their student bodies, while concurrently advocating for designated lifestyle medicine education within formal curricula. The Donald A. Pegg Student Leadership Award was created by Dr. Beth Frates, current President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, to recognize outstanding student leaders in the field of lifestyle medicine, and specifically for the work related to their LMIG. The Donald A. Pegg Award provides recipients with LMIG funding for their respective institutions, complementary registration for the American College of Lifestyle Medicine national conference, and a stipend for conference travel. The funding provided by the Donald A. Pegg Award allows LMIGs to expand their reach to their greater student bodies, helping to further the field of lifestyle medicine. The purpose of this article is to highlight the 2022 Donald A. Pegg award recipients and how they are using its merit to advance the field of lifestyle medicine.