Key takeaways:

  • Medical accreditors, assessors and organizations have joined HHS’ nutrition education initiative.
  • Also, 19 more medical schools pledged to implement 40 hours of nutrition education or a competency equivalent.

HHS and the U.S. Department of Education announced several developments in their efforts to improve nutrition education in medical schools.

According to an HHS press release, eight medical accrediting, assessment and board organizations have “committed to implementing reforms aimed at instilling measurable nutritional education across key medical training programs.” The groups are:



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Eight medical accreditors, assessors and organizations and 19 more schools have joined HHS’ nutrition education initiative. Image: Adobe Stock

  1. the National Board of Medical Examiners;
  2. the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education;
  3. the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education;
  4. the Liaison Committee on Medical Education;
  5. the National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners;
  6. the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation;
  7. the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine; and
  8. the American Board of Medical Specialties.

HHS also announced that 19 additional medical schools have voluntarily committed to requiring at least 40 hours of nutrition education or a competency equivalent beginning this fall. They join the 54 other medical schools that previously pledged to these voluntary commitments when HHS first announced the initiative in March.

“We’re putting nutrition education at the forefront of medicine and prevention at the forefront of health care,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during a press briefing. “We’re training future physicians to address the root causes of diseases, not simply manage their consequences. And we’re building a medical system that gives doctors better tools, patients better information, and families a better chance to live long, healthy lives.”

HHS’ efforts to improve nutrition education under the second Trump administration began last year when the agency urged medical schools to immediately implement nutrition requirements into learning, such as continuing education, board certification and pre-medical standards.

In a 2022 survey, medical students reported receiving just 1.2 hours of formal nutrition education yearly, the release said. Before these recent commitments, three-fourths of U.S. medical schools did not require nutrition courses and just 14% of residency programs mandated a nutrition curriculum.

“While these commitments are groundbreaking, they are also rooted in common sense,” Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said during the briefing. “From adding required nutrition hours to integrating competencies across all 4 years and revising assessments, these actions promise real progress toward our shared goal of a healthier America.”

Jessica Snowden, MD, MS, MHPTT, vice chancellor for research at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, said HHS’ initiative “recognizes something we all see every day in our clinical work and in our communities: nutrition is not a side issue in health care. It’s fundamental to many of the things we need to have a healthy lifespan.”

“One of the things that is most exciting for me about this particular initiative is the opportunity to connect scientific evidence and nutrition education with real-world implementation,” she said. “As universities, we help generate the evidence that informs what’s going to move forward. We train the workforce. We evaluate outcomes to help you figure out what works and what doesn’t work. Importantly, we can help you figure out how to scale things so that they are implementable in a variety of communities.”

Robert Glatter, MD, FACEP, FAAEM, an assistant professor at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, told Healio that HHS’ call for greater nutrition education “represents an important opportunity to align physician training with the clinical realities of chronic disease prevention and management.”

Robert Glatter

“For physicians, the issue is not whether nutrition should replace pharmacologic or procedural therapies when indicated. It should not. The issue is whether clinicians can competently address one of the most powerful modifiable determinants of long-term outcomes,” he said. “Medical students should graduate being able to obtain a focused dietary history, recognize major dietary risk patterns, interpret nutrition labels, screen for food insecurity and deliver brief, evidence-based counseling that is culturally and economically realistic.”

The goal, Glatter added, is to ensure that physicians can “integrate nutrition into prevention and chronic disease care.”

“Strengthening nutrition education in medical school is therefore not curricular ornamentation; it is core clinical training,” he said.

For more information:

Robert Glatter, MD, FACEP, FAAEM, is an emergency medicine physician at Lenox Hill Hospital. He can be reached at rglatter@northwell.edu; Instagram rdglatter; LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr911/; and X @DrRobertGlatter.

Sources/Disclosures

Source:

Press Briefing

Reference:


Disclosures:
Healio could not determine relevant financial disclosures at the time of publication.

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