The Complete Health Improvement Program (CHIP) is a premier lifestyle intervention targeting chronic disease that has been offered for more than 25 years. The intervention has been used in clinical, corporate, and community settings, and the short-term and long-term clinical benefits of the intervention, as well as its cost-effectiveness, have been documented in more than 25 peer-reviewed publications. Being an easily administered intervention, CHIP has been presented not only by health professionals but also by non-health-trained volunteers. The benefits of the program have been extensively studied under these 2 delivery channels, consistently demonstrating positive outcomes. This article provides a brief history of CHIP and describes the content and structure of the intervention. The published evaluations and outcomes of the intervention are presented and discussed and future directions are highlighted.
Keywords: chronic disease; health education; lifestyle intervention; lifestyle medicine; therapeutic nutrition.