The University of Tennessee Health Sciences is among more than 70 academic healthcare institutions in 36 states that have committed to a new Department of Health and Human Services initiative to strengthen nutrition education in the nation’s healthcare training programs.
UT Health Sciences Vice Chancellor for Research Jessica Snowden, MD, a pediatrician, was the only representative of the academic healthcare institutions chosen to speak about The Advancing Nutrition Education Across the Medical Continuum initiative during a press conference Monday in Washington, D.C. The initiative encourages America’s leading medical education institutions to add comprehensive nutrition education and training into their curriculum.
“Nutrition is not a side issue in healthcare, it’s fundamental to many of the things that we need to have a healthy lifespan,” Snowden said.
The HHS initiative asks participating institutions to work toward providing a minimum of 40 hours of required nutrition education in health professional training or a 40-hour competency equivalent across all four years of medical education starting this fall. The intent is to reinforce the critical role of nutrition in improving patient outcomes and advancing public health.
More than 70 institutions in 36 states have committed to the initiative. This equates to 52,000-plus students receiving enhanced nutrition education, according to HHS.
UT Health Sciences, which added nutrition education into its medical school curriculum in 2018, was highlighted Monday for being among 19 institutions joining the initiative recently.
“Nutrition is fundamental for any major health outcome that we see,” Snowden said.
“At the same time, many of our communities that bear the highest burden of these chronic diseases face significant barriers to accessing healthy foods and evidence-based support. It’s our job, as the people who train our healthcare providers, to make sure we can bridge that gap.”
Snowden said programs at UT Health Sciences integrate nutrition science, culinary medicine, and lifestyle interventions. “Our learners want more opportunities to develop those skills in culinary medicine, whether it’s in our elective or in our many student interest groups across all levels of training and across all of our colleges, because we recognize the importance of food as medicine for our patients,” she said.
Additionally, she said academic institutions have a unique role to play in improving public health. “One of the things that is most exciting for me about this particular initiative is the opportunity to connect scientific evidence and nutrition education with real-world implementation. As universities, we help generate the evidence that informs what’s going to move forward. We train the workforce, we evaluate outcomes to help you figure out what works and what doesn’t work, and importantly, we can help you figure out how to scale things so that they are implementable in a variety of communities. Our community partners are equally important because they’re the ones who help us guide these solutions to be practical, trusted, and responsive to local needs.”