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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently demanded that medical schools teach nutrition, and that the organizations in charge of medical education standards had two weeks to come up with plans to teach it, and include it in licensing exams and residency requirements.
Two local medical schools say they’re ready — because they have included nutrition as part of their curricula for years.
Drexel University’s nutrition curriculum dates back to the late 1990s, said Michael White, professor emeritus of pharmacology and physiology at the Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia. Medical students spend around 20 hours of class time learning about topics like vitamins, food labels, and how to assess a patient’s energy and nutrition needs to have proper food for them during hospital stays.
“Given how much nutrition we already cover, we don’t have much to worry about with that declaration from HHS and the Department of Education,” he said.
He added that the medical school faculty at Drexel considers nutrition to be an important part of health, which is why the program has had it as part of its curriculum for so many years.
Cooper Medical School at Rowan University in New Jersey not only teaches nutrition across various courses, the school also has research projects and community service projects focused on nutrition, said Sangita Phadtare, an assistant dean and professor of biomedical sciences at the university.
For example, students participate in a local community garden to grow fresh vegetables, and they also worked with a local community group to explain to Spanish-speaking residents how to interpret food labels, and how diabetes patients can build healthy meals from dollar-store foods like dried beans and frozen vegetables, if they don’t have cars.
“As a school, we try to do our part because we believe that Camden is our home. It’s not just our workplace,” Phadtare said.
“Even though I would say that we fare well, there is always scope for doing more,” she added. “We personally, as a medical education community, think that nutrition in medical education is important. And even without anybody telling us that, we should be doing that.”
A Cooper Medical School student works on the Cooper Sprouts Community Garden in 2024. (Courtesy of Cooper Medical School of Rowan University)
