PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health and Nutrition
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1653382
This article is part of the Research TopicIntegrating Climate Change into Health Education and PromotionView all articles
Nutrition as Preventive Medicine: A Call for Integration into Medical Education
Provisionally accepted
- 1Inova Fairfax Hospital, Falls Church, United States
- 2Rowan University Cooper Medical School, Camden, United States
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Despite the central role of diet in preventing and managing chronic disease, nutrition remains underrepresented in U.S. medical education. In light of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s recent policy proposal to link federal funding to required nutrition instruction, this editorial calls for urgent reform in how future physicians are trained. We examine the evidence linking poor diet to disease burden, highlight existing gaps in medical curricula, and propose actionable strategies for integrating nutrition education across undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education. By preparing physicians to counsel patients on nutrition and advocate for healthier food systems, we can improve population health, reduce healthcare costs, and fulfill medicine's foundational mission of disease prevention. 15
Keywords: Plant-based diet, Medical Education, nutrition education, Nutrition education and chronic disease, Plant-forward diet
Received: 25 Jun 2025; Accepted: 22 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kalwaney and Cerceo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Elizabeth Cerceo, Rowan University Cooper Medical School, Camden, United States
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