ODU is launching a new nutrition science institute backed by a $15M gift. It aims to change medical training and address chronic disease across Hampton Roads.
NORFOLK, Va. — According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, chronic and mental health now account for ninety percent of all health care spending in the United States. Leaders at Old Dominion University say nutrition may be one of the most powerful tools to change that trajectory.
“There’s strong evidence to suggest that our diets are really [a] major contributor to the increased risk of obesity, increased risk of diabetes, and certainly related to the chronic illnesses that we have in general,” said Dr. Alfred Abuhamad, Executive Vice President for Macon and Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at Old Dominion University.
ODU has announced the creation of the Joan P. Brock Institute for Nutrition Science and Health, a new institute designed to change how future health care providers are trained and how patients are treated by emphasizing nutrition and lifestyle medicine in care.
The institute is backed by a $15 million foundational gift from philanthropist Joan P. Brock. Dr. Abuhamad said additional donors have also come forward.
“We’re close to $20 million already,” he said.
The institute comes as Hampton Roads faces a particularly heavy health burden, Dr. Abuhamad said.
“The health metrics in our neighborhoods are not good, and… they rank towards the bottom of where they ought to be,” he said. “We have a high prevalence of cancer– be it breast, be it colon, be it prostate. We have a high prevalence of obesity and diabetes and hypertension and heart disease, and the need for workforce is immense in Southeastern Virginia.”
One of the institute’s goals is to expand nutrition education in medical and health professions training.
According to the Journal of Biomedical Education, most medical students receive fewer than 20 hours of nutrition education over four years. Dr. Abuhamad said ODU plans to address that by building a four-year nutrition track for medical students.
“We don’t want them to be pharma agents, writing prescriptions without really addressing the root cause of the illness,” he said.
ODU has also established a Master of Science in Nutrition, with the first cohort of students set to begin in fall 2026. Dr. Abuhamad said the program is designed to prepare future providers to use nutrition as part of disease prevention and treatment.
“Nutrition is, at the core… probably the most important thing that we can do, as individuals and as a community, to reduce chronic illnesses,” he said.
Outside of the classroom, the institute will support research and community engagement through new facilities planned on campus, including a metabolic kitchen and a metabolic research chamber.
“The [metabolic] kitchen is able to prepare exact food the way you want it formulated as part of research, but also to do demonstrations to the community about how to prepare whole food, how to… prepare healthy diets,” Dr. Abuhamad said. “And also, we’re building a metabolic chamber. A metabolic chamber is a very advanced research chamber that actually is tied to nutrition and measures all the output and input that… we bring in to really help in these sophisticated research activities.”
And rather than focusing only on a person’s symptoms, he said the institute aims to promote looking at patients more broadly.
“Really, we should step back and [focus] on treating the whole person… by advocating scientifically proven, sound nutrition and lifestyle into what we do every day,” Dr. Abuhamad said.
He noted that the Joan P. Brock Institute for Nutrition Science and Health will officially launch with an event scheduled for March 10, and a national search is underway for its first executive director.
Dr. Abuhamad also expects the institute to be fully operational by this summer as facilities come online and academic programs expand.
