The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Education on Wednesday launched a joint initiative calling on medical schools to expand nutrition education, saying stronger training could help prevent and even reverse chronic disease.
Medical education organizations must submit plans by Sept. 10, outlining how they will integrate nutrition into training — including timelines, measurable milestones, standards alignment, and accountability measures, according to an HHS statement.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that while physicians are trained to use advanced surgical tools, they often lack preparation to guide patients in preventing disease. “Future physicians must graduate prepared to prevent disease — by assessing risk, guiding lifestyle change, providing nutritional counseling, educating patients, and addressing environmental factors, with nutrition education as the most proven and powerful tool,” Kennedy wrote in a Wall Street Journal commentary.
Survey data from the Association of American Medical Colleges published this month found that all 149 accredited U.S. medical schools include some nutrition content, but fewer than half integrate it across multiple courses or clinical rotations. Only 17 percent reported full integration throughout all years of study.
Efforts to strengthen nutrition training have been underway for years. In 2023, physicians and professors, including a representative from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, issued a consensus statement in JAMA Network Open recommending 36 nutrition competencies for licensing and board exams.
The initiative also builds on a 2022 bipartisan House resolution that urged “meaningful” nutrition education in medical training, citing rising health care costs tied to diet-related diseases.
“In an imagined future, physicians will be appropriately trained in nutrition and able to translate science into practical, evidence-based, and culturally sensitive advice for patients, families, and communities,” the statement’s authors wrote.
