Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Education Secretary Linda McMahon are calling on medical schools to provide nutrition education to students, pointing to data that many medical students receive less than two hours of nutrition instruction.
Nutrition requirements should be embedded across various facets of schooling for medical students, including the medical licensing examination and residency, officials said on Aug. 27.
“Medical schools talk about nutrition but fail to teach it,” Kennedy said in a statement. “We demand immediate, measurable reforms to embed nutrition education across every stage of medical training, hold institutions accountable for progress, and equip every future physician with the tools to prevent disease—not just treat it.”
A poor diet can lead to serious health problems, such as heart disease. Each year, more than 1 million Americans die from diet-related diseases, government nutrition experts have said.
“We pour more than four trillion dollars annually into treating these preventable diseases, and we continue to graduate physicians unprepared to confront their root cause,” Kennedy said in a video statement.
Researchers in a 2015 paper found that 71 percent of U.S. medical schools provided fewer than 25 hours of nutrition instruction. A 2023 study based on a survey of medical students found that they reported an average of 1.2 hours of nutrition education per year.
The Association of American Medical Colleges, a nonprofit, said this month that schools and other institutions have provided insufficient nutrition training, but that more recent data show there has been an increase in education and experiences related to nutrition. The organization cited how more than 90 percent of American and Canadian medical schools that responded to a survey said they provided education on nutrition-related topics, such as obesity and food access.
The data “demonstrate that while nutrition education has achieved universal inclusion in medical school curricula,” it said, “few schools have implemented nutrition as a fully integrated longitudinal thread throughout their curricula.”
Kennedy and McMahon said the improvements are not enough.
Officials said they directed American medical organizations to file by Sept. 8 plans with the government that outline how nutrition education is provided, and whether it meets national standards.
The organizations were not identified. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services declined to identify them.
“Medical schools understand the critical role that nutrition plays in preventing, managing, and treating chronic health conditions, and incorporate significant nutrition education across their required curricula,” Dr. Alison Whelan, chief academic officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges, told The Epoch Times via email. “Through integrated education experiences, future physicians learn how to recognize the impact of diet on health and to apply evidence-based nutritional strategies in patient care.”
Kennedy said that if reforms are implemented, they will result in savings of hundreds of billions of dollars in health care spending and prevent millions of chronic diseases.
“In the future, doctors won’t just prescribe drugs, they’ll be able to prescribe diets as well by confidently screening for diet-related diseases and collaborating with nutrition experts to recommend food-based solutions,” the health secretary said in the video statement. He added later that the approach “is both radical and common sense.”
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