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The American College of Sports Medicine has launched a new national campaign called "Exercise is Medicine ®." It is designed to educate and train health care professionals on how to most effectively prescribe regular exercise for their patients, and to make doing so a regular part of their practices.  I and my colleague Edward Phillips, MD, Director of the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School, are the authors of this official ACSM textbook in support of the program. It is based in part on my 1995 book Regular Exercise: A Handbook for Clinical Practice (New York: Springer Publishing). It was published in March, 2009 by Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins.  It is available at a 20% discount directly from LWW through the link to it on this website.

The program and the book cover the range of knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for successfully prescribing regular exercise, with a special emphasis on the element that is missing in much of both the professional and lay literature on the subject: how to successfully mobilize ones motivation for making personal health promotional behavior change.  About one third of the book is devoted to this subject. The book also covers such essential matters as: how to organize one’s practice for effectively prescribing regular exercise; the two patterns of regular exercise --- “lifestyle” and “scheduled leisure-time;” exercise programs designed to meet the new Dept. of Health and Human Services “Physical Activity Guidelines;” writing the exercise prescription; choosing among the various sports and activities; technique and equipment for various sports and activities; promoting regular exercise for children; and how to have fun as a regular exerciser.