From Evidence to Practice: Why the Vietnam Lifestyle Medicine Alliance Exists and What We Aim to Build

From Evidence to Practice: Why the Vietnam Lifestyle Medicine Alliance Exists and What We Aim to Build

Category: Lifestyle Medicine in Viet Nam

Last reviewed: October 21, 2026

Scientific evidence has taught us a great deal about how everyday behaviors influence health. Yet translating that knowledge into meaningful, lasting changes in people's lives remains a challenge, even when the recommendations are well established.

A physician may explain why changes in diet, physical activity, or sleep could help someone manage a chronic condition. The patient may understand the advice and genuinely want to follow it. But long working hours, family responsibilities, financial constraints, or other health problems can make those changes difficult. Healthcare professionals, meanwhile, may have limited consultation time, insufficient training in behavior-change support, or few options for coordinated follow-up.

The distance between scientific knowledge and everyday practice is therefore not simply a matter of awareness or motivation. It also reflects how healthcare is organized, how professionals are prepared, and the circumstances in which people live.

The Vietnam Lifestyle Medicine Alliance (VLMA) was established in 2025 with this challenge in mind. Our purpose is to help strengthen the connection between scientific evidence, professional capability, and the responsible application of Lifestyle Medicine in Viet Nam.

We believe the field's long-term value will depend less on how widely Lifestyle Medicine is promoted and more on whether its principles can contribute to better-informed professional decisions, appropriate patient care, and meaningful healthcare improvement.

Why Viet Nam Needs More Than Lifestyle Advice

Viet Nam already has considerable experience in health promotion, disease prevention, and chronic disease management. Physicians, nurses, nutrition professionals, rehabilitation teams, public health practitioners, and other healthcare workers have long helped people address health-related behaviors.

Lifestyle Medicine should build on these contributions rather than present itself as an entirely new or separate approach to healthcare.

The challenge is how to make evidence-based lifestyle interventions more consistent, practical, and appropriately integrated into existing care. Recognizing the importance of healthy behaviors does not automatically mean healthcare professionals have the knowledge, skills, resources, and organizational support needed to help patients make sustainable changes.

International research offers valuable guidance, but the conditions in which that research was conducted may differ from those found in Viet Nam. Healthcare organizations vary in workforce capacity, available services, patient populations, and financial resources. An intervention developed and evaluated in a well-resourced healthcare system may provide useful lessons without necessarily being suitable for direct adoption in a Vietnamese hospital, clinic, or community healthcare setting.

The broader health system is also evolving. The World Health Organization's December 2025 review of Viet Nam's commune health system highlighted opportunities and challenges related to primary healthcare delivery, financing, and governance. Strengthening these foundations is important for improving access to people-centered care, including prevention and long-term disease management.

At the same time, healthcare professionals and the public have access to an enormous amount of information about nutrition, physical activity, sleep, and other lifestyle-related topics. Some of it is supported by rigorous scientific research. Other material relies on preliminary findings, personal experience, or commercial claims that may not accurately reflect the available evidence.

More information does not necessarily produce better decisions. What matters is knowing how to evaluate that information, recognize uncertainty, and determine what is appropriate for a particular patient or healthcare setting.

We believe this is an area where a dedicated professional platform can make a useful contribution.

Why We Established the Vietnam Lifestyle Medicine Alliance

VLMA was created to help connect international scientific knowledge with professional learning and healthcare practice in Viet Nam.

We are a physician-led, mission-driven professional platform operated by Vietnam Lifestyle Medicine Alliance Company Limited. Our work is centered on evidence translation, professional education, knowledge exchange, research collaboration, and responsible implementation.

Our role is to complement existing healthcare institutions and professional disciplines, not replace them. We hope to contribute by making reliable knowledge more accessible, encouraging thoughtful professional discussion, and helping create opportunities for learning and collaboration.

International engagement is part of this direction. VLMA joined the Lifestyle Medicine Global Alliance as a Sister Organization in 2025 and the Planetary Health Alliance as a Member Organization in 2026. These relationships provide opportunities for professional exchange, learning, and collaboration across countries and disciplines.

International connections are valuable, but they are not a substitute for local knowledge or professional accountability. Nor do they confer regulatory authority, medical licensing powers, or responsibility for determining the lawful scope of clinical practice in Viet Nam.

We also recognize that establishing an organization is very different from demonstrating its value. Having a professional platform, publishing educational content, or participating in international networks does not, by itself, mean that healthcare practice has improved.

Credibility must be earned through the quality of our work, the standards we follow, and our willingness to examine what we have actually contributed.

That is the foundation we want to build.

Where We Have Chosen to Focus

Lifestyle Medicine encompasses a wide range of clinical, educational, and public health activities. No single organization can address every need, particularly while developing its own professional capacity.

Rather than trying to work across every possible area, VLMA has chosen four connected priorities to guide its development.

Our first priority is translating scientific evidence into reliable and practical professional knowledge.

We want healthcare professionals to understand not only what research has found, but also how strong the evidence is, what limitations should be considered, and when a recommendation may or may not be appropriate.

This is the purpose behind our Knowledge & Evidence resources. We aim to examine questions that matter to healthcare professionals, distinguish established findings from emerging research, and explain how available evidence may relate to Vietnamese healthcare.

Scientific knowledge is not fixed. The 2025 update to the international Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies and the subsequent 2026 publication describing their governance and updating process illustrate the importance of maintaining professional standards that respond to new evidence and changing healthcare needs.

We want the same commitment to ongoing learning, critical appraisal, and revision to guide our educational publications. Where the evidence is uncertain, that uncertainty should be communicated clearly. Where new findings change an earlier understanding, our content should be reviewed and updated accordingly.

Our second priority is strengthening professional education and capability.

Understanding the value of Lifestyle Medicine is only the beginning. Healthcare professionals also need appropriate skills in communication, shared decision-making, behavior-change support, risk recognition, and multidisciplinary collaboration.

Educational activities should help professionals make better-informed decisions within their responsibilities. They should not be designed simply to increase the number of certificates people receive.

Different professional groups have different training needs and scopes of practice. A physician, nurse, clinical nutrition professional, pharmacist, rehabilitation professional, or other healthcare worker may contribute to lifestyle-related care in different ways. Effective professional education needs to respect those differences while encouraging appropriate collaboration.

Our third priority is connecting international evidence with the realities of life in Viet Nam.

An intervention may be supported by strong research but still prove difficult for someone to follow. Food affordability, employment conditions, family responsibilities, living environments, existing health conditions, and access to healthcare can all influence what is realistic.

These circumstances deserve attention when recommendations are developed, communicated, and applied. Vietnamese food culture, household structures, working patterns, and differences between urban and rural settings may also affect how an intervention is understood and adopted.

Local relevance does not mean compromising scientific standards. It means considering the evidence alongside the needs, preferences, and circumstances of the people expected to benefit from it.

Our fourth priority is supporting responsible implementation and learning from experience.

Knowledge becomes more useful when it helps address real problems. Over time, VLMA hopes to explore appropriate opportunities with healthcare organizations, educational institutions, researchers, and other partners to connect professional learning with practical healthcare needs.

An initiative might begin with a question raised by clinicians, an educational gap identified by a healthcare organization, or a challenge encountered when applying an evidence-based recommendation in routine care.

We believe the most useful work begins with a clearly understood need, appropriate professional involvement, realistic objectives, and a willingness to evaluate what happens in practice.

These priorities describe the direction in which we intend to develop VLMA. They should not be interpreted as claims that every proposed activity has already been established, completed, or demonstrated to be effective.

Building a Professional Community With a Purpose

Professional communities matter because they bring people together who might otherwise work in isolation. They create opportunities to exchange experience, ask questions, and learn from colleagues with different backgrounds.

VLMA welcomes growing interest in Lifestyle Medicine in Viet Nam. However, we do not consider membership numbers alone to be an adequate measure of success.

A large community may reach many people without necessarily improving professional knowledge or practice. A smaller community that encourages critical thinking, produces reliable resources, and supports useful collaboration may also create meaningful value.

For VLMA, professional connection should serve a purpose beyond networking.

We hope to develop an environment where people can discuss scientific evidence openly, share relevant experience, recognize the limits of their expertise, and learn from constructive disagreement. Members should have opportunities to contribute to professional learning, not simply receive information.

Growth is welcome, but it should be accompanied by stronger professional capability, responsible participation, and contributions that matter.

The community we want to build is therefore defined not only by who joins, but also by what its members can learn and accomplish together.

How We Want to Evaluate Our Contribution

It is relatively easy for an organization to report how many articles it has published, educational activities it has organized, or professional relationships it has developed.

These figures may be useful, but they do not tell the whole story.

As VLMA develops, we want to distinguish between the activities we undertake, the resources or opportunities those activities produce, and the outcomes that can reasonably be demonstrated.

For our Knowledge & Evidence publications, the important questions concern scientific accuracy, relevance, transparency of sources, and usefulness to healthcare professionals. We also want to remain open to feedback, corrections, and periodic review as evidence develops.

For professional education, attendance and completion rates can help describe participation. Where appropriate and feasible, we also want to understand whether participants have gained useful knowledge, developed relevant skills, or become better prepared to apply what they have learned within their professional responsibilities.

For collaborative initiatives, evaluation should reflect the objectives of each activity. A scientific discussion, an educational project, and a healthcare implementation initiative may each require different approaches to understanding their results.

We must also be careful about how we describe impact. Positive feedback does not necessarily mean that clinical practice has improved. A successful educational event does not automatically demonstrate better patient outcomes. When improvements occur through collaboration, they may reflect the combined contributions of many people and organizations rather than the work of VLMA alone.

Any claims about our contribution should therefore be proportionate to the evidence available.

Not every initiative will achieve its intended objectives. Some may reveal practical barriers, limitations in available knowledge, or assumptions that need to be reconsidered. These experiences can still be valuable if they are examined honestly and used to inform future work.

We do not expect every contribution to be immediately measurable. Nevertheless, we believe that asking what has changed, what has been learned, and what remains uncertain is part of responsible organizational development.

The Standards That Should Guide Our Work

A professional platform earns trust through the standards it maintains, not simply through the information it publishes or the organizations with which it is associated.

For VLMA, scientific integrity is essential. Our educational content and professional perspectives should reflect credible evidence, appropriate critical appraisal, and a clear distinction between established knowledge, emerging findings, and professional opinion.

Relevant conflicts of interest should be disclosed and managed responsibly. Commercial relationships must not determine our scientific positions or educational recommendations.

We also believe that Lifestyle Medicine should remain firmly connected to evidence-based healthcare.

Lifestyle interventions can contribute meaningfully to disease prevention and treatment, but they should not be presented as universal solutions or automatic replacements for appropriate medical care. Claims about treatment benefits, remission, or other clinical outcomes must be consistent with the evidence for the specific condition and intervention.

Professional responsibilities must remain clear. VLMA is not a healthcare service provider, a medical licensing authority, or the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine. We do not issue medical practice licenses or IBLM certification.

Participation in VLMA activities, membership in its professional community, or completion of an educational program does not independently authorize clinical practice, confer a legally recognized specialty qualification, or expand a healthcare professional's lawful scope of practice. Any continuing education recognition must also meet the applicable requirements and be clearly identified when relevant.

Educational, research, and implementation activities involving healthcare organizations, professionals, or patient information must respect the applicable legal, ethical, professional, and institutional requirements in Viet Nam.

Equally important is our understanding of the circumstances that influence health.

People do not make decisions about food, physical activity, sleep, or other behaviors in isolation. Their financial resources, working conditions, family responsibilities, health status, and access to support affect the choices available to them.

Lifestyle Medicine should encourage healthcare professionals to understand these realities and work with patients in ways that are respectful, realistic, and clinically appropriate. It should not become another reason to blame people who find recommended changes difficult to achieve.

These principles should shape how VLMA communicates, develops educational activities, chooses collaborations, and evaluates its work.

What We Hope to Build Together

VLMA is still developing its professional foundations. Our Knowledge & Evidence resources are an early part of that process, providing a way to examine important questions and contribute to scientific and professional discussion.

The longer-term opportunity is to connect reliable knowledge with professional learning, multidisciplinary exchange, research collaboration, and appropriate healthcare improvement activities.

We recognize that this work will require contributions from many people and organizations.

Healthcare professionals understand the challenges of clinical care. Educators bring experience in developing knowledge and skills. Researchers can help identify unanswered questions and evaluate potential solutions. Healthcare organizations understand the operational, financial, and governance considerations that influence whether an approach can be implemented and sustained.

International colleagues may contribute valuable knowledge and experience, while Vietnamese professionals and institutions are essential to determining what is relevant and feasible in the local context.

Not every contribution needs to begin with a formal partnership or a large project. Sometimes useful collaboration starts with a shared question, feedback on an educational resource, or an honest conversation about why a promising approach has been difficult to apply.

We hope VLMA can help create opportunities for these discussions to lead to meaningful professional contributions.

There will inevitably be limitations. We cannot address every problem or guarantee that every initiative will succeed. Our professional capabilities, resources, and relationships will need to develop over time.

Being open about those limitations is part of building a platform that others can trust.

From Evidence to Practice: Our Commitment

Much of the scientific knowledge relevant to Lifestyle Medicine already exists. Healthcare professionals in Viet Nam are also making important contributions to prevention, health promotion, and chronic disease care.

The opportunity is to connect that knowledge more effectively with professional capability and the practical conditions needed for responsible healthcare delivery.

That is why we established the Vietnam Lifestyle Medicine Alliance.

Our ambition is not simply to bring more people into a community or add another name to the healthcare landscape. We want VLMA to become a professional platform valued for the reliability of its knowledge, the quality of its educational contributions, its openness to collaboration, and its commitment to learning from practice.

That reputation cannot be established through organizational titles, international affiliations, membership numbers, or the volume of content we publish. It must be earned through consistent work, professional integrity, and a willingness to examine whether our activities are genuinely useful.

Progress may be gradual, and meaningful contributions will depend on the people and organizations who choose to work with us. What matters is maintaining a clear direction while remaining responsive to new evidence, local needs, and lessons learned along the way.

For VLMA, moving from scientific evidence to practice is more than a message. It is the reason we exist, the principle guiding our priorities, and the standard against which we want our contributions to be judged.

Selected References

1. Vietnam Lifestyle Medicine Alliance. About VLMA: Mission, Governance and Leadership. VLMA; 2026.

2. World Health Organization. Primary Health Care in Viet Nam: A Review of the Commune Health System. WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific; December 2025.

3. Rea BL, Cheema S, Lanza S, et al. Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies: 2025 Update. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. 2026;20(3):443–451. First published online October 28, 2025. doi:10.1177/15598276251379821.

4. Rea BL, Cheema S, Lanza S, et al. Governance and Update Process for Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies and Definitions. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. 2026;20(7):1116–1123. doi:10.1177/15598276261424740.

Editorial and Professional Scope Note

This article presents the organizational perspective, priorities, and intended direction of the Vietnam Lifestyle Medicine Alliance as of October 2026. It is intended for professional information and knowledge exchange and does not constitute a clinical practice guideline, individualized medical advice, or an official regulatory interpretation. Statements concerning proposed educational, research, or implementation activities should not be understood as confirmation that those activities have been completed or that their effectiveness has been demonstrated. Relevant activities must comply with applicable Vietnamese law, professional scopes of practice, institutional governance requirements, and ethical standards.