Lifestyle Medicine Research Priorities for Viet Nam 2027 - 2030: A Proposed Research and Implementation Agenda

Lifestyle Medicine Research Priorities for Viet Nam 2027 - 2030: A Proposed Research and Implementation Agenda

Last reviewed: 22 September 2026

Lifestyle Medicine in Viet Nam is reaching a point where the next important question is no longer simply whether lifestyle matters to health. The evidence that tobacco use, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, harmful alcohol use and cardiometabolic risk contribute substantially to chronic disease is already strong.

The more difficult questions are now local and practical. What do we still not know about lifestyle-related health in Viet Nam? Which international findings translate well into Vietnamese populations, and which require local validation? How should Lifestyle Medicine be integrated into hospitals, outpatient clinics and primary care? Which approaches to behavior change are sustainable in Vietnamese families and communities? Which outcomes should be measured? Who benefits, who may be left behind, and can successful models be delivered at scale without creating unnecessary cost or workload?

These questions matter because noncommunicable diseases account for about 80% of deaths in Viet Nam. In September 2026, the World Health Organization reported that a large-scale initiative of the Ministry of Health, supported by the World Health Organization and Resolve to Save Lives, was screening around 10 million people each year for hypertension and diabetes and had brought more than two million people into treatment through strengthened grassroots healthcare.[3]

The policy environment is also increasingly supportive of prevention and stronger primary healthcare. The Law on Disease Prevention No. 114/2025/QH15 came into effect on 1 July 2026, while the National Strategy for the Protection, Care and Improvement of People's Health to 2030 calls for stronger disease prevention, management of risk factors and development of a stronger primary healthcare system.[4,5] In September 2026, the Ministry of Health also issued Circular No. 34/2026/TT-BYT to guide selected implementation activities for the first phase, from 2026 to 2030, of the National Target Programme on Healthcare, Population and Development 2026–2035.[6]

Against this background, Lifestyle Medicine research in Viet Nam should move beyond awareness and isolated educational activities toward locally relevant evidence, implementation science and measurable health-system learning.

The agenda below is proposed by the Vietnam Lifestyle Medicine Alliance as a framework for discussion and priority-setting for 2027–2030. It is not a national research agenda, government policy, funding directive or formal consensus statement.

What do we already know?

Viet Nam is not starting from zero. The Ministry of Health and World Health Organization STEPS 2021 survey already provides nationally important information on major noncommunicable disease risk factors. The survey covers tobacco use, alcohol use, physical inactivity and unhealthy diet, together with biological risk factors including overweight and obesity, raised blood pressure, raised blood glucose and abnormal blood lipids. The full Viet Nam report was published by the World Health Organization in February 2025.[2]

This provides a strong national surveillance foundation for several established risk factors, while also helping identify important gaps. The published Viet Nam STEPS 2021 report does not provide comparable national estimates across several other domains now relevant to Lifestyle Medicine, including sleep, chronic stress, social connectedness and the processes through which people receive and sustain behavior-change support. This does not mean that no Vietnamese research exists in these areas. It means that these domains are not represented in national risk-factor surveillance with the same systematic coverage as tobacco, alcohol, diet, physical activity and major cardiometabolic risk factors.

The international Lifestyle Medicine framework has also evolved. The 2025 Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies contain 89 competencies, with a new competency addressing social determinants of health and updated competencies on Planetary Health and food processing.[1] Research priorities for Viet Nam should reflect this broader understanding of health rather than repeatedly measuring only the lifestyle variables for which evidence is already comparatively well established.

Research Priority 1: Build a more complete picture of lifestyle-related health in Viet Nam

A first priority for 2027–2030 should be strengthening epidemiology and surveillance while filling important gaps in what is currently measured.

Sleep is one clear example. Future research could examine sleep duration, sleep quality, shift work, common sleep disorders and their relationships with cardiometabolic and mental health across different Vietnamese populations. Chronic stress and emotional well-being require similar attention, but should not be reduced to a single question asking whether someone “feels stressed.” Studies need appropriate measures, attention to occupational and family context and a clear distinction between everyday stress, clinically significant psychological distress and mental health disorders.

Social connection is another area where the Vietnamese context matters. International Lifestyle Medicine competencies recognize connectedness as relevant to health, but the way connectedness is experienced may vary across cultures and generations. Household structure, migration, urbanization, population ageing, family relationships, digital communication and participation in community life may all influence social connection in Viet Nam.

Nutrition research should also move beyond the relatively limited dietary indicators available in national risk-factor surveillance. Food processing, food environments, affordability, eating outside the home, sugary beverages, ultra-processed foods and changes in Vietnamese dietary patterns deserve further study.

This does not mean that every Lifestyle Medicine domain should be added to one national survey. Different questions may be better answered through national surveillance, cohort studies, targeted population surveys, clinical registries or qualitative research. The important task is to identify which information is missing and develop an intentional strategy for obtaining it.

Research Priority 2: Develop and validate measures that work in Vietnamese populations

Better data depend on better measurement, yet many health and behavior studies rely on instruments developed in other languages, cultures and healthcare systems. Translation alone does not establish that an instrument measures the same construct reliably in Viet Nam.

Research between 2027 and 2030 should therefore prioritize the translation, cultural adaptation and validation of selected instruments for nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress, social connection, self-efficacy, patient activation and other clinically useful domains.

This does not mean that Viet Nam needs to invent a new questionnaire whenever an international instrument already exists. In many cases, adapting and validating an established instrument will be more useful than developing another measure from the beginning.

Researchers should also resist the temptation to create a universal “Lifestyle Medicine score.” Nutrition, sleep, tobacco exposure, physical activity, mental health and clinical risk are not interchangeable. Combining them into one number may make a dashboard visually simple while making the result less useful for clinical decisions.

A more valuable goal is agreement around core measures for specific populations and care pathways. A hypertension program, obesity service, tobacco-treatment pathway and perioperative intervention should not all use the same outcome set.

This direction is consistent with a 2025 Lifestyle Medicine implementation research agenda developed through a hybrid Delphi process with Dutch experts. That work identified four major themes: sustainable behavior change, stronger research designs and outcome measurement, biological mechanisms and improved data infrastructure. The authors proposed the agenda as guidance for applied research rather than as a universal international consensus statement.[7]

Research Priority 3: Understand what produces sustainable behavior change in the Vietnamese context

Knowing what people should do is different from knowing how to help people sustain change. Lifestyle Medicine research in Viet Nam should therefore move beyond short-term measures of knowledge, intention and satisfaction.

A study showing that participants know more about healthy eating after a seminar may demonstrate an educational effect, but it tells us little about whether dietary behavior changes six or twelve months later. Future research should examine maintenance, relapse, self-efficacy and the conditions that make behavior change sustainable.

The Vietnamese context is particularly important because family members often influence food purchasing and meal preparation. Long working hours, shift work and commuting can affect physical activity, sleep and eating patterns. Social expectations may influence alcohol use, family meals and social connection. Food cost and availability affect dietary choices, while neighborhood design and transport systems influence everyday movement.

These influences should not simply be described as “barriers to adherence.” They are part of the system in which behavior occurs. Mixed-methods research may therefore be particularly useful: quantitative studies can establish whether change occurred, while qualitative work can help explain why people were or were not able to sustain that change. Sustainable behavior change at patient, healthcare-professional and organizational levels was also one of the major themes identified in the 2025 implementation research agenda.[7]

Research Priority 4: Test Lifestyle Medicine in real Vietnamese healthcare settings

One of the most important research gaps is no longer whether nutrition, physical activity, sleep or tobacco cessation can influence health. Much of that underlying evidence already exists.

The more locally relevant question is:

How can evidence-based Lifestyle Medicine actually work inside Vietnamese healthcare organizations?

Viet Nam needs pragmatic implementation research in hospitals, outpatient clinics and primary care. Studies should examine how patients are identified, which lifestyle assessments are feasible, how clinical risk is assessed, how interprofessional teams work, whether referrals are completed, who owns follow-up and how Lifestyle Medicine can be incorporated into existing workflows without creating unsustainable administrative burden.

Different delivery models should also be compared. Some populations may be managed mainly through individual consultations, while others may benefit from structured group programs, multidisciplinary care, digital follow-up or hybrid models.

The purpose should not simply be to demonstrate that a pilot can be run. Where appropriate, studies should examine clinical effectiveness and implementation at the same time, including acceptability, feasibility, fidelity, workload and sustainability. Pragmatic, mixed-method and hybrid effectiveness-implementation designs may be particularly useful for complex interventions delivered in real healthcare environments.[7] Not every question requires a randomized controlled trial. The research design should follow the question, not the other way around.

Research Priority 5: Build evidence for Lifestyle Medicine education and workforce development

Lifestyle Medicine cannot be integrated responsibly into healthcare without professionals who understand both what to do and the limits of their role.

Research should therefore examine what Vietnamese healthcare professionals currently know about Lifestyle Medicine, where meaningful competency gaps exist and which educational approaches actually change professional practice. This should not be limited to physicians. The 2025 Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies were developed for use across several healthcare disciplines while also recognizing that some clinical competencies may fall outside the scope of non-provider healthcare practitioners.[1]

Viet Nam therefore needs research on competency-based, role-specific and interprofessional education. For physicians, relevant areas may include clinical assessment, disease management, treatment-related safety and integration with condition-specific guidance. For nurses, clinical nutrition professionals, clinical psychologists, rehabilitation professionals and other healthcare workers, appropriate competencies and professional boundaries will differ.

Education studies should also move beyond immediate pre-test/post-test knowledge scores. More meaningful questions include whether training changes clinical behavior, whether skills are retained, whether referral patterns improve and whether patient care changes as a result.

International professional certification such as DipIBLM may be useful for some eligible professionals, but certification should not become the only measure of workforce capability. Viet Nam also needs scalable foundational and role-appropriate education for professionals who may never pursue formal international certification.

Research Priority 6: Make equity and priority populations part of the research design

Lifestyle Medicine can unintentionally widen disparities if interventions work mainly for people who already have more time, money, education, digital access or easier access to healthcare.

Equity should therefore be considered when studies are designed, not added only after the primary analysis has been completed. Researchers should examine whether access, participation, follow-up, attrition and outcomes differ across socioeconomic circumstances, geographic areas, occupations, disability, digital access and other factors relevant to the research question.

A life-course perspective is particularly important. Among Vietnamese children and adolescents aged 5–19 years, overweight and obesity increased from 8.5% in 2010 to 19.0% in 2020, highlighting the need to understand food environments, physical activity, family influences, commercial exposures and sustainable prevention before adulthood.[13]

At the other end of the life course, Viet Nam is ageing rapidly. In February 2026, the United Nations Population Fund reported that within about a decade, more than one in five Vietnamese citizens will be aged over 60, marking the country's transition to an aged society.[8]

Lifestyle Medicine research for older adults should therefore look beyond conventional disease prevention. Physical function, frailty, sarcopenia, nutritional status, social connection, cognitive health, multimorbidity and the ability to maintain independence will increasingly matter.

Equity research should not become an excuse to collect every possible demographic variable. Information should be collected because it answers a defined question and can be used responsibly, with appropriate participant protections and data governance.

Research Priority 7: Develop responsible digital models and stronger data infrastructure

Lifestyle Medicine lends itself naturally to digital tools because diet, physical activity, sleep, symptoms and home measurements can be followed over time through questionnaires, remote monitoring, wearable technologies and mobile applications.

Technology should not, however, be assumed to improve healthcare simply because it produces more data. Research should examine whether digital approaches improve engagement, clinical outcomes, continuity and accessibility, and whether those benefits justify the additional complexity they create. Interoperability with clinical records, data quality, clinician workload, alert fatigue, patient usability and the appropriate balance between automation and professional review are all relevant.

The digital divide also matters. A model that performs well among younger, highly connected and digitally confident participants may have much less value among older adults or communities with limited access or digital literacy.

Data governance must be built into this research from the beginning. Viet Nam's current regulatory environment includes Decree No. 102/2025/NĐ-CP on health data management, effective from 1 July 2025, together with the Law on Personal Data Protection No. 91/2025/QH15 and Decree No. 356/2025/NĐ-CP, both effective from 1 January 2026.[9–11]

Research should therefore ask not only “Can we collect this data?” but also “Why do we need it, who needs access, how will it improve care, and how can it be processed responsibly?”

Research Priority 8: Understand cost, resource use and long-term sustainability

A Lifestyle Medicine program can improve clinical outcomes and still be difficult to sustain. Research in Viet Nam should therefore include health-economic and operational questions from the beginning rather than treating them as an afterthought.

Relevant measures may include staff time, training requirements, referral capacity, patient out-of-pocket expenditure, travel, medication and healthcare utilization, hospitalization and the resources needed to maintain the model.

Researchers should be particularly careful with claims that Lifestyle Medicine automatically “saves money.” Whether an intervention reduces costs is an empirical question. Some models may reduce downstream healthcare utilization, while others may initially increase expenditure because unmet needs are identified or because multidisciplinary care requires additional capacity.

Economic evaluation should therefore examine costs alongside health outcomes, identify who bears those costs and consider whether the model remains viable when pilot funding or external support ends. For hospitals and clinics, budget impact and operational feasibility may be as important as conventional cost-effectiveness when deciding whether an intervention can move from pilot to routine care.

Research Priority 9: Evaluate policy and system-level interventions that shape lifestyle-related health

Many determinants of lifestyle-related health sit outside an individual consultation. Research should therefore also examine the effects of policy, commercial environments and other system-level interventions.

Viet Nam is entering a useful period for this kind of evaluation. National Assembly Resolution No. 173/2024/QH15 established the prohibition on the production, trading, importation, storage, transportation and use of electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products, and Decision No. 1665/QĐ-TTg subsequently established an implementation plan for that prohibition.[14,15]

The Special Consumption Tax Law No. 66/2025/QH15, effective from 1 January 2026, also introduced important policy changes relevant to noncommunicable disease prevention. Among them, beverages falling within the applicable national standard and containing more than 5 g of sugar per 100 mL are subject to a special consumption tax rate of 8% from 1 January 2027 and 10% from 1 January 2028. The law also changes taxation of tobacco, alcohol and beer over time.[16]

These changes create opportunities for rigorous real-world evaluation. Research could examine whether exposures and behavior change, whether implementation differs across settings or socioeconomic groups, whether intended health effects emerge and whether unintended consequences occur.

Randomized trials will often be impossible or inappropriate for policy questions. Interrupted time-series analyses, difference-in-differences approaches, natural experiments and other quasi-experimental methods may therefore be useful where the available data and assumptions support credible causal inference.

For Lifestyle Medicine, this matters because individual counseling and population policy should not be treated as competing approaches. Food, tobacco, alcohol, commercial environments and the built environment all shape how realistic individual behavior change can be.

Research Priority 10: Study Lifestyle Medicine within the environmental conditions shaping health

Planetary Health should be included in the research agenda, but not as a separate “seventh pillar” of Lifestyle Medicine.

The 2025 Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies updated the Planetary Health competency to emphasize the bidirectional relationship between human and planetary health, including the built environment and urban green spaces.[1]

For Viet Nam, relevant research questions include how extreme heat affects physical activity and sleep, how air pollution changes the conditions for outdoor movement, how built environments influence walking and social connection, and how food systems affect both nutrition and environmental sustainability.

This field is already developing nationally. In September 2026, the World Health Organization highlighted a national scoping review of climate-sensitive diseases intended to strengthen Viet Nam's climate-health evidence base. The review considers both infectious and noncommunicable diseases and reflects growing attention to the health effects of climate-related exposures.[12]

Lifestyle Medicine research can complement this work by examining how environmental conditions affect the feasibility, safety and effectiveness of lifestyle-based interventions. The objective is not to turn every Lifestyle Medicine project into a climate study, but to recognize when environmental conditions materially change the behavior, exposure or clinical outcome being investigated.

A cross-cutting consideration: Biological mechanisms should answer clinically useful questions

Biological mechanisms remain scientifically important. The 2025 implementation research agenda identified mechanistic research as one of its four major themes, including questions about the biological pathways through which successful lifestyle interventions influence disease.[7]

Research involving inflammation, metabolism, the microbiome, epigenetics and other mechanisms may therefore be valuable in Viet Nam. Highly specialized laboratory research, however, should ideally be linked to questions that could meaningfully change prevention, treatment, risk stratification or implementation.

In some areas, it may be more valuable for Vietnamese researchers to participate in strong international collaborations than to reproduce expensive mechanistic studies that have already been conducted extensively elsewhere. Local research is most valuable when local context can change the answer.

What kinds of research are less likely to move the field forward?

Not every study carrying the Lifestyle Medicine label will strengthen the evidence base. Small uncontrolled studies showing that participants lost weight after an intensive program may provide useful early feasibility information, but they should not automatically be interpreted as evidence that the intervention will work in routine care or in other populations.

Repeated surveys asking healthcare professionals whether they “believe Lifestyle Medicine is important” will also provide diminishing value unless they address a clearly defined knowledge gap. Convenience samples should not be presented as nationally representative. Short-term pre-test/post-test education studies should not be treated as evidence of sustained clinical competence, and novel Lifestyle Medicine scores should not be introduced without appropriate development and validation.

Research should also measure more than positive outcomes. Attrition, unintended harms, unsuccessful referrals, additional workload, inequitable access and failure to achieve intended outcomes are all scientifically useful findings.

A negative result does not mean that a research project failed. Sometimes the most valuable finding is understanding why a promising intervention did not work in a particular setting.

Research in Viet Nam should not simply reproduce international evidence

A research agenda for Lifestyle Medicine in Viet Nam should be selective.

Viet Nam does not need to repeat every international randomized trial demonstrating that smoking cessation improves health or that physical activity influences cardiovascular risk. International evidence should be treated as a foundation, not as something that must be rediscovered locally before it can inform care.

The highest-value local questions are usually those for which the Vietnamese context could plausibly change the answer. These may involve culture, food systems, healthcare organization, workforce, urbanization, rural access, family structures, population ageing, disease patterns, professional regulation, financing or technology.

For many topics, the more useful research question will therefore be “How should this evidence be adapted, implemented and evaluated in Viet Nam?” rather than “Can we prove the same biological fact again in Viet Nam?”

A proposed research approach for 2027–2030

This article should not be the final word on research priorities. A stronger next step would be to convert this proposed agenda into a transparent priority-setting process involving Vietnamese clinicians, researchers, universities, public-health institutions, healthcare organizations, patients, community representatives and relevant international experts.

A formal process could begin with a systematic or scoping review of Lifestyle Medicine-related research conducted in Viet Nam, together with mapping of existing datasets, clinical programs and ongoing studies. Knowledge gaps could then be assessed through a modified Delphi process or another structured consensus method.

Priority-setting should consider more than scientific novelty. Relevant criteria could include disease burden, size of the evidence gap, feasibility, likely clinical or public-health value, equity implications, scalability, resource requirements and the likelihood that the research could influence policy or practice.

Patients and communities should also have a meaningful role. Researchers, clinicians and patients do not necessarily identify the same priorities, particularly when interventions affect daily behavior, family life, cost and access.

Any formal VLMA-supported process should publish its methodology, stakeholder composition, conflicts of interest and prioritization criteria transparently.

What role should VLMA play?

VLMA should not position itself as the organization that independently determines Viet Nam's national Lifestyle Medicine research priorities. Its more appropriate role is to convene, connect and enable.

That can include identifying evidence gaps, connecting researchers across institutions, facilitating multicenter collaboration, encouraging standardized outcome measurement, connecting Vietnamese researchers with international Lifestyle Medicine networks and providing a platform through which research findings can be translated into education and practice.

VLMA can also help create continuity between research and implementation. A project should not necessarily end when the paper is published. Findings with clinical or organizational relevance can inform education, clinical pathways, quality-improvement work and subsequent research questions.

This approach is consistent with the wider direction of Lifestyle Medicine implementation research, which increasingly emphasizes sustained behavior change, stronger methodology, implementation science and better data infrastructure rather than simply producing more isolated efficacy studies.[7]

Building a learning system for Lifestyle Medicine in Viet Nam

The purpose of a 2027–2030 research agenda should not be to maximize the number of papers containing the words “Lifestyle Medicine.” It should be to make the field more useful.

By 2030, Viet Nam should ideally know more about lifestyle-related risks that are not currently well captured in national surveillance, which measures work reliably in Vietnamese populations, which behavior-change approaches can be sustained, how Lifestyle Medicine can be integrated into real healthcare organizations, which educational models change professional practice, who benefits and who is missed, and which models are economically and operationally sustainable.

The timing is appropriate. Viet Nam is strengthening prevention, primary healthcare and community management of noncommunicable disease, while the first phase of the National Target Programme on Healthcare, Population and Development runs through 2030.[3,6]

Lifestyle Medicine research can contribute to that environment, but it should do so with scientific discipline and appropriate humility.

The question for the next phase is therefore not simply “How can we produce more Lifestyle Medicine research in Viet Nam?” It is:

“Which research questions, if answered well, would make prevention and lifestyle-based care safer, more effective, more equitable and more implementable in the Vietnamese healthcare system?”

That is the standard against which research priorities for 2027–2030 should be judged.

References and further reading

1. Rea BL, Cheema S, Lanza S, Makinde MT, Matthews S, Palma M, Szentgyörgyi B, Karlsen MC. Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies: 2025 Update. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. 2026;20(3):443–451. doi:10.1177/15598276251379821.

2. World Health Organization Regional Office for the Western Pacific. National survey on the risk factors of noncommunicable diseases in Viet Nam, 2021. Published 7 February 2025.

3. World Health Organization Viet Nam. Strengthened grassroots health care brings noncommunicable disease services to 10 million in Viet Nam. 8 September 2026.

4. National Assembly of Viet Nam. Law on Disease Prevention No. 114/2025/QH15. Adopted 10 December 2025; effective 1 July 2026.

5. Prime Minister of Viet Nam. Decision No. 89/QĐ-TTg approving the National Strategy for the Protection, Care and Improvement of People's Health to 2030, with a vision to 2045. 23 January 2024.

6. Ministry of Health of Viet Nam. Circular No. 34/2026/TT-BYT guiding selected implementation matters for the National Target Programme on Healthcare, Population and Development 2026–2035, Phase I 2026–2030. Issued and effective 8 September 2026.

7. Vos RC, van Osch LADM, van Bilsen JHM, et al. Evidence-based implementation of lifestyle medicine in healthcare practice: a research agenda. Family Medicine and Community Health. 2025;13(3):e003324. doi:10.1136/fmch-2025-003324.

8. United Nations Population Fund Viet Nam. Population Ageing in Viet Nam: From Demographic Transition to Development Opportunity. 10 February 2026.

9. Government of Viet Nam. Decree No. 102/2025/NĐ-CP on health data management. Effective 1 July 2025.

10. National Assembly of Viet Nam. Law on Personal Data Protection No. 91/2025/QH15. Effective 1 January 2026.

11. Government of Viet Nam. Decree No. 356/2025/NĐ-CP detailing certain provisions and implementation measures of the Law on Personal Data Protection. Effective 1 January 2026.

12. World Health Organization Viet Nam. Consultation Meeting to Validate Scoping Review Findings on Climate Change and Climate-Sensitive Diseases. 11 September 2026.

13. UNICEF Viet Nam. Childhood overweight in East Asia and Pacific has doubled, making the region home to one in four of the world's affected children. Viet Nam country information, 2025.

14. National Assembly of Viet Nam. Resolution No. 173/2024/QH15 on question-and-answer activities at the 8th Session of the 15th National Assembly. 30 November 2024.

15. Prime Minister of Viet Nam. Decision No. 1665/QĐ-TTg issuing the implementation plan for Resolution No. 173/2024/QH15 regarding the prohibition of production, trading, importation, storage, transportation and use of electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products. 5 August 2025.

16. National Assembly of Viet Nam. Law on Special Consumption Tax No. 66/2025/QH15. Adopted 14 June 2025; effective 1 January 2026.

Research and policy note: This article presents a proposed research and implementation agenda developed by the Vietnam Lifestyle Medicine Alliance for professional discussion. It is not a national research agenda, government research priority, Ministry of Health policy, funding framework or formal consensus statement. Individual research projects require appropriate scientific methodology, ethical review where applicable, institutional authorization, participant protections, data governance and compliance with current Vietnamese law. The proposed priorities should be refined as new evidence, national data and stakeholder perspectives become available.

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