The Lifestyle First Programme
A healthier school community starts with healthier habits
What would the impact be if your students; slept better, moved more, spent less time on screens, built stronger relationships, and ate real food?
At Lifestyle First we have found that those small lifestyle changes lead to improvements in behaviour, attendance, motivation and achievement across your school community!
Why Lifestyle First?
Modern life has changed dramatically in a very short period of time. Young people are sleeping less, moving less, spending more time on screens, and experiencing higher levels of stress than previous generations. Because these changes have happened gradually and reinforce one another, unhealthy habits can start to feel normal.
Lifestyle First was created after our founder, Dan Newman, started working with students and their families on a person-centered health coaching approach and noticed the dramatic effect it also had on their behaviour, attendance, motivation and as well as overall wellbeing.
A whole-school approach to wellbeing
Over the past five years, we have brought together teachers, lifestyle medicine doctors, GPs, educational psychologists and paediatricians to develop a programme that schools can easily adopt and that scales these positive changes across entire school communities.
To achieve this the Lifestyle First Programme uses the principles of lifestyle medicine and health coaching, encouraging healthier behaviours across staff, students and parents, with minimal disruption and little additional workload for school staff.
More than simply a PSHE curriculum, it is a whole-school wellbeing programme designed to create lasting cultural change.
The programme includes:
- A complete PSHE curriculum aligned with current DfE guidance
- Wellbeing survey tools
- In-lesson resources and campaigns
- Support for staff, students and parents
- Practical strategies to improve health and wellbeing across the school community
Creating a different normal
Lifestyle First helps schools create a culture where compassionate curiosity is the norm, healthier choices are easier, more visible and more normal — supporting better wellbeing and stronger outcomes for the whole school community. Our programme will also help your school address many of the points raised in the new Education White Paper.
A curriculum designed for modern wellbeing
The Lifestyle First student curriculum is designed to help children feel safe, curious and empowered in their learning and wellbeing.
Through an age-appropriate understanding of how the body works as a connected system — and how we are connected to the wider natural world — students begin to make better sense of their physical and mental health.
Designed for busy schools
All lessons and resources are ready to teach, easy to access and designed with busy teachers in mind.
The curriculum covers the three core PSHE areas:
- Relationships
- Health and wellbeing
- Living in the wider world
These themes are explored through a lifestyle medicine lens, with a focus on fostering curiosity, compassion and self-awareness — helping students build habits that support long-term wellbeing and learning.
Supporting staff and families
We also provide staff CPD resources to help teachers deliver the programme with confidence while supporting their own wellbeing and understanding of these concepts.
Because parents and carers play such an important role in children's development, the programme includes a dedicated parent portal with guidance and practical support for navigating modern challenges and creating healthy conditions for children to thrive.
Embedding healthy habits into school life
Alongside the curriculum, schools gain access to practical tools, campaigns and classroom features that help embed positive lifestyle habits into the school day and wider school culture.
Assessing wellbeing and belonging will be a requirement in schools and the LF platform can help take this to the next level. When you subscribe you willl have the ability to select standardised surveys or create bespoke options and the platform also crunches the data for you and produces great visuals, highlighting trends, ranking scores and flagging concerns.
Staff, students and parents can take the surveys through their own login, allowing you to get granular with the analysis.
The self reporting feature is designed to build more awareness around existing lifestyle habits. By paying more attention to our behaviours we often see motivation to make positive changes. The feature gently reminds you to use it and allows you to set new weekly goals!
Health coaching is rapidly developing into one of the most powerful interventions for supporting behaviour change!
It can help build awareness of the root causes of behaviour and the barriers preventing you from optimising your performance. Whether at school or in your personal life, health coaching develops a self confidence that is only possible from taking ownership of your health and wellbeing.
Schools use many helpful interventions but the advantage of health coaching is that it is much more holistic and deals with every aspect of lifestyle that could influence how a person is thinking, feeling and behaving.
Preventative approach to wellbeing focussing on health creation.
Cultural change to address the 'lifestyle drift we are seeing across our society.
Huge impact on students with poor attendance, behaviour, focus, learning, EBSA, anxiety, mental health.
Lifestyle First training courses for health coaches in an educational setting are accredited by the UKIHCA.
In order to encourage students towards healthier choices we have also created a Lifestyle First Award which is aligned with the BSLM
Learn more Book Demo
we also have a package that trains up to 3 members of staff to become Lifestyle First Champions
Lifestyle First Champion Training
Our curriculum, tools and campaigns are most effective when there are dedicated members of your school community leading the programme.
We recommend subscribing to the Lifestyle First Champion Training, which includes places for up to three members of your school team and helps establish confident, effective leadership across all aspects of the programme.
Practical support for implementation
The online training takes place once each half term and is designed to build confidence in implementing lifestyle medicine principles across your school community.
Sessions include:
- Practical guidance for delivering the programme
- Support with planning and timing initiatives
- Ideas for student and parent campaigns and events
- Strategies for creating sustainable cultural change
While our platform provides the framework, the training helps schools adapt the programme to suit their own environment and community.
Learn alongside other schools
Training takes place alongside other schools, helping participants build supportive networks, share best practice and learn from common challenges.
This collaborative approach helps schools maintain momentum and confidence while creating lasting change.
Designed with busy schools in mind
As teachers ourselves, we understand the time and resource pressures schools face when introducing new initiatives.
The Lifestyle First Champion Training is designed to save time, simplify implementation and help schools deliver the programme in a practical and sustainable way — while also inspiring ideas and initiatives that are unique to your school community.
As the CEO of Lifestyle First, I have spent the past five years studying lifestyle medicine and holistic therapies, such as Internal Family Systems, to further enhance my health coaching skills. I have introduced the Lifestyle First programme across Xavier CET and am currently building a team to expand its impact. Additionally, I lead the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine (BSLM) Schools Special Interest Group and contribute to course development for both the BSLM and the UK and International Health Coaching Association (UKIHCA).
At Lifestyle First, we are dedicated to empowering individuals and organisations to prioritise health and well-being as the foundation for success and fulfilment.