ELMIRA, N.Y. (WENY) — LECOM, which has a campus in Elmira, is one of over 50 medical schools across the nation potentially receiving a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services for increasing its nutrition education commitment.
Even though it’s described as a hand-shake agreement, LECOM is hopeful that bolstering its nutrition curriculum will better prepare their students in the medical field.
Prior to the news of the potential grant, LECOM had already committed to providing around 30 hours of nutrition education. Following a gathering of numerous medical schools with HHS, they have voluntarily decided to increase that amount to 60 hours.
“Teaching doctors how to teach their patients nutrition. I think it’s very critical given that 75% of the population is either overweight or obese, and you know now one in 10 patients are on a drug like Ozempic, a GLP-1, or Zepbound. That’s just not sustainable,” remarked Dr. Richard Terry, Dean of LECOM Elmira.
The Department of Health and Human Services has cited a Journal of Wellness study from 2022, stating that medical students had only received 1-point-2 hours of nutrition instruction yearly. In Thursday’s announcement of the guidelines, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stressed that the majority of healthcare funds go towards chronic illness, attributed to poor nutrition.
“Medical education must teach the science of nutrition. Yet today, the average medical student reports receiving less than two hours of nutrition education every year, and that ends now. In conversation after conversation with leading researchers and medical school deans, I heard the same message,” Kennedy said on Thursday.
Students beyond their first year at LECOM will not need to catch up with first year students receiving the revised nutrition curriculum. LECOM says they will remain committed to training students to promote healthy lifestyles and decisions rather than deferring to dieticians.
“ I think the whole idea of incorporating nutrition education into the osteopathic curriculum, it’s what we do. It’s part of what we’re, you know, what our training has been foundationally, fundamentally what osteopathic physicians learn. So we welcome this and adding it to our curriculum. I think it’s, I think it’s very important. I think it’s long been ignored for decades by the medical profession,” added Terry.
In a statement, HHS said that it will dedicate five million dollars to the over 50 participating medical schools. Though the schools participating have not yet been told how or when the funds will be distributed.
The expanded nutrition curriculum will begin in the fall of 2026.
