Earlier this month, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr announced a “transformative breakthrough” in addressing the nation’s chronic disease epidemic: 53 U.S. medical schools would require at least 40 hours of nutrition education for aspiring doctors.
In the weeks since, Straight Arrow News surveyed those schools named by the Department of Health and Human Services, and found that many already meet or exceed the 40-hour threshold. The survey raises questions about how much the policy would actually change existing training.
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Moreover, experts told SAN that expanding nutrition education alone is unlikely to meaningfully shift Americans’ diets and address the chronic disease burden.
Many schools already meet new standard
SAN contacted all 53 schools HHS said had committed to requiring at least 40 hours of nutrition education beginning in fall 2026. Of the 24 that responded, 18 said they already met or exceeded the 40-hour threshold.
Four reported providing fewer than 40 hours and said they plan to increase nutrition training. West Virginia University School of Medicine currently requires 10 hours with an additional 16 to 20 elective hours; Kansas City University offers 15 to 20 hours; the University of Nebraska curriculum includes 21 hours; and the University of South Florida provides 36 hours.
One school could not quantify hours, and another — Xavier University of Louisiana — is not scheduled to open its medical school until 2027.
Taken together, the findings suggest that the recent HHS announcement — which Kennedy asserted would “reshape the way we train doctors in our country” — largely spotlighted schools that already prioritize nutrition training, rather than driving a broad shift in medical education.
“Our curriculum committee, prior to the Health and Human Services call, probably about two years ago, passed that they wanted us to tackle nutrition and take our nutrition curriculum to the next level,” said Deborah DeWaay, the senior associate dean for undergraduate medical education at the University of South Florida.
“The push from the Trump administration has accelerated how fast we’ve been able to implement curricular change,” she told SAN.
Each medical school develops its own curriculum though there are certain minimum standards — pegged to national exams — that students must meet.
Next year, the University of South Florida will implement a new curriculum with about 75 hours of nutrition training, covering foundational concepts, specialty-specific topics — such as toddler nutrition for pediatricians or breastfeeding for future OB-GYNs — and more advanced work, including designing disease-specific diets and counseling patients on those plans.
University of California Irvine’s medical school also told SAN the school had already upgraded its nutrition education prior to the HHS announcement.
“Our medical students already receive about 40 hours of nutrition-related education, and beginning this fall we will expand that to 50 hours of dedicated nutrition training, integrated into the core curriculum,” said Shaista Malik, a professor of medicine and the associate vice chancellor for integrative health at Irvine’s Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences.
While a handful of medical schools highlighted by Kennedy have already implemented the 40-hour minimum, most medical schools nationwide likely still fall short of that threshold.
Several surveys conducted in 2015 found that only 29% of U.S. medical schools met the then-recommended minimum of 25 hours of nutrition education, while 75% of schools offered no dedicated clinical nutrition coursework. The majority of specialists treating nutrition-related diseases said they received little to no nutrition training during fellowships or residency programs.
In 2022, Congress introduced a resolution urging medical schools to better address nutrition education, prompting several schools to expand related training.
Government overstep?
On its face, requiring doctors to spend more time learning about nutrition seems a sensible step to address the country’s substantial chronic disease burden. Today, 60% of Americans have at least one chronic disease while 40% have two or more, according to the CDC, costing trillions of dollars in direct medical expenses. While researchers do not know entirely what is driving the rise of chronic diseases — especially in younger people — poor diet, alongside other lifestyle factors such as lack of exercise or drug and alcohol use, plays a major role.
However, some critics say Kennedy’s move amounts to government overreach and oversimplifies the nation’s health and food insecurity crisis.
“This is a good example of when (Kennedy) says things that there’s often a kernel of truth in what he’s saying, but that the implementation matters,” said Jill Rosenthal, the director of public health policy at the Center for American Progress.
“I think it’s bad precedent to have the federal government pressuring medical schools to change their curriculum,” she told SAN. “He has pretty much threatened them and said that he could use federal funding as leverage, which is not a good reason to make policy changes.”
DeWaay acknowledged general hesitation around government involvement, but said the way HHS approached the effort was well done.
“I tend to be a huge skeptic of government, and that’s a bipartisan comment. HHS did their curriculum request very well. The objectives are very well written,” she told SAN. “They are giving schools choice to figure out what’s best for their curriculum. The number of hours they’re expecting is very, very reasonable.”
DeWaay, Rosenthal and others noted that improving nutrition and tackling the country’s chronic disease epidemic will require far more than expanding nutrition education for doctors.
“Just giving physicians information in and of itself is not enough,” DeWaay said. “The nutrition curriculum is a piece of a very complicated puzzle.”
For one, physicians need time to discuss nutrition with patients, yet most primary care visits last only about 10 to 20 minutes due to high patient volumes, administrative demands and reimbursement models that prioritize efficiency over comprehensive visits. Allowing physicians to be reimbursed for time spent counseling patients on nutrition could help, said Tami Hendriksz, the dean of Touro University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine. But, she said, not all providers can bill for those services under existing insurance rules.
Some, though not all, health insurance plans cover dietitian services, which could help ease the burden on physicians. But Hendriksz, who is also a pediatrician, said many of her patients struggle to find time to see a doctor, let alone schedule an additional appointment with a dietitian.
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Moreover, critics say the Trump administration has done little to address the country’s persistent food insecurity challenges.
More than 18 million Americans live in a food desert where they have limited access to affordable, healthy foods. Fruit, vegetables and other fresh, minimally processed foods cost two to three times more than ultra-processed foods such as chips or frozen dinners. Almost 50 million Americans struggled to afford food in 2024. More than half of students at U.S. public schools rely on free or reduced-price school lunches, which are notoriously unhealthy, often feature ultraprocessed and fried foods, and regularly exceed recommended daily levels of sodium and fat.
Yet recent legislation has targeted food assistance programs. Last year, Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut $186 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over 10 years and imposed stricter work requirements — mandating that recipients either work at least 20 hours per week or receive benefits for just three months over a three-year period.
In all, Kennedy’s push to restructure nutrition education for medical students is a policy “operating in a vacuum,” Rosenthal explained. “It’s a failure to consider the factors that really influence what we all eat.”
