One of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s refrains has focused on medical education: Doctors don’t know enough about nutrition and preventive medicine, he likes to say. He has encouraged medical schools to beef up (tallow up?) their education on healthy eating and its connection to chronic disease.
What do medical students think of this?
On this week’s episode of the “First Opinion Podcast,” I spoke with Tiffany Onyejiaka, a fourth-year medical student, and Lauren Rice, who is poised to start her residency in internal medicine this summer.
Both have written First Opinion essays on Kennedy’s claims. In November, Tiffany argued that it would be more productive to support the work of registered dietitians and encourage them to collaborate with doctors. More recently, Lauren wrote that she agreed that medical school needs more of a preventive health mindset.
I brought them together to discuss each other’s arguments and compare their experiences in medical school.
“Our country’s health is going down a very poor trajectory and something needs to change,” Lauren said on the podcast. “I don’t have the answer to what that needs to be. I don’t think Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has the answer. I don’t think anyone has the answers. But the conversation needs to start and it needs to a conversation with a lot people at the table.”
Though their pieces might seem to be in tension, the two agreed in many ways, and their different perspectives led to some interesting conclusions. “Yes, doctors need more help, but I feel like there’s so many people that are already doing the work and there are so many barriers that I feel we would get more of an impact by trying to really focus on helping them and then having doctors engaged instead of starting with us,” said Tiffany.
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