Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced Thursday that 53 medical schools in 31 states have agreed to require all medical students to complete 40 hours of nutrition education as part of their training. At a news conference at the Health and Human Services Department, Kennedy said, “This is how we implement the MAHA agenda, how we make America healthy again.”
In keeping with the Trump administration’s philosophy, Kennedy said the commitments are voluntary and officials emphasized that the government will not tell the schools they must teach nutrition. “This is a school-led project” he said, led by University of Nebraska President Jeffrey Gold, the former chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and board chair for the Nebraska Medicine Health System from 2014 to 2024. “This is not the Trump administration dictating medical curriculum,” Kennedy added. It’s unclear what the medical students will be taught, but American Medical Association President Bobby Mukkamala said that sodium and sugar are “drivers of disease.”
“The Department of Education will never mandate curriculum. That is not our job. But we will celebrate reforms,” McMahon said.”How often have we heard ‘you are what you eat?,’” she said. “Some foods cause inflammatory responses. To make America great again we must first make it healthy again.”
Health and Human Services will make $5 million in competitive grants for curriculum development, Kennedy said. Asked by a reporter whether medical schools will be punished in any way if they do not agree to teach nutrition education, Calley Means, an adviser to Kennedy, said the event was a celebration and proof that the schools and the administration can work together.
Kennedy repeated previous statements that the country is in a “spiritual malaise” that could be aided by families cooking and eating together, but that too many Americans don’t know how to cook.He also repeated a previous statement that he has put the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps in charge of teaching Americans to cook, but this time said it’s unclear whether the commissioned officers will undertake the role or hire contractors to do it.
Mukkamala, a physician in Flint, Mich., said, “For too long nutrition has been treated as an elective. It should be a basic in medical training. It means giving doctors the means to help patients prevent disease.”
Mukkamala also said: The priorities in medical education need updating, and schools are embracing the idea that food is medicine.This is not about turning doctors into nutritionists, but making sure physicians feel competent in these conversations.
Patients are starting to ask him about these issues even though he is an ear, nose and throat doctor.
He is now certified in lifestyle medicine, but “how awesome it would be to have had this training earlier.”
Advising patients on nutrition means moving from acting on illnesses to preventing them.
Association of Medical Colleges President and CEO David Skorton said, “We value our partnership with HHS. This is a great example of an area of alignment.”
American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine President and CEO Robert Cain said that osteopathic medicine includes the mind as well as the body.
Cain noted that more than half of the campuses of the colleges of osteopathic medicine are in rural and underserved communities and that an estimated 80% of health care happens in community-based sessions.
Kennedy credited Jeffrey Gold, the president of the University of Nebraska, with pulling together the effort to encourage nutrition education.
“Much of health is a gift from parents in genetic code,” but environment, lifestyle and personal decisions are also determinants, Gold said.
Exercise, nutrition, tobacco, alcohol “are predominantly lifestyle decisions,” he noted.
Dan Glickman, the Agriculture secretary in the Clinton administration, noted in an email to The Hagstrom Report that he, Ann Veneman, the Agriculture secretary in the George W. Bush administration; Bill Hoagland, a former staff director of the Senate Budget Committee, and Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a former Senate Majority Leader and physician, had all pushed for more nutrition education for doctors through their roles at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “I rarely praise this administration on very much, but on this issue they deserve a positive response for at least putting the issue on the agenda,” Glickman said. “None of the elite universities that previously reached funding-related settlements with the Trump administration — including Brown, Columbia, Cornell and Northwestern — joined Mr. Kennedy’s plan, even though they have well-regarded medical schools,” The New York Times said.
–The Hagstrom Report
