New concepts for nutrition, science and lifestyle in medical education

In the second administration of President Donald J. Trump, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has suggested medical schools should be required to teach nutrition and diet as part of their curricula, or risk losing federal funding.

Some schools already do this, and the state of nutritional and dietary education has evolved in recent years during the president’s first term and the tenure of President Joe Biden.

That evolution continues. Jennifer L. Trilk, PhD, FACSM, DipACLM, is a professor of biomedical sciences and director of the Lifestyle Medicine Program for the School of Medicine Greenville at the University of South Carolina. That school opened its doors with a principle that students would learn about lifestyle medicine, including nutrition and the importance of physical activity, behavior change and self care. In this video series, Trilk discusses how the School of Medicine Greenville developed this program, how doctors can help their patients, and where lifestyle medicine fits into the U.S. health care system.

Trilk is a co-author of “Proposed Nutrition Competencies for Medical Students and Physician Trainees: A Consensus Statement,” published in JAMA Network Open. The authors’ goal was to recommend nutrition competencies in medical education to improve patient and population health. She is the co-founder of the Lifestyle Medicine Education Collaborative, which has published free medical education curriculum materials on lifestyle medicine.