In a move aimed at tackling the nation’s chronic disease epidemic, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced a sweeping effort to overhaul nutrition education in medical training.
The Trump administration leaders are demanding that medical schools, residency programs, licensing boards, and accrediting organizations implement rigorous, measurable nutrition education at every stage of medical training. Kennedy called the current system unprepared to equip physicians with the tools needed to prevent and even reverse diet-related diseases, which claim an estimated one million American lives annually and account for nearly 90% of the $4 trillion U.S. healthcare budget, in an August 27 press release.
Under the new initiative, nutrition will be embedded in pre-med curricula, tested on the MCAT, and incorporated throughout medical school and residency programs. Licensing examinations and continuing education requirements will also be updated to ensure doctors can confidently provide food-based solutions to patients, rather than relying solely on medications.
“We are reconnecting medicine with its roots,” Kennedy said in a direct-to-camera video released Wednesday. “Hippocrates said, ‘Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.’ His advice remains true today, and we are bringing back food to its proper place in medicine.”
Calls for increased nutrition education are not a new phenomenon. A 2019 Wall Street Journal commentary by Stanford’s Dean of Medicine, Lloyd Minor, noted that most medical students receive fewer than 20 hours of nutrition instruction during medical school, and practicing physicians rarely feel prepared to counsel patients on diet. Kennedy’s and McMahon’s push marks the first major federal effort to institutionalize these reforms.
The initiative also echoes evidence from decades of public health research. The landmark Guyer study summarized trends in American health over the 20th century, concluding that improvements in nutrition—not just medical advancements—were a significant factor in the decline in infectious disease mortality and the increase in life expectancy.
Kennedy cited similar historical patterns during his 2024 presidential campaign, emphasizing that chronic disease in America today stems largely from diet-related causes and environmental factors, as reported by DX at the time.
With the support of the Department of Education, the administration aims to reach more than 200 U.S. medical schools, 13,000 residency and fellowship programs, and the nation’s 1.1 million practicing physicians, effectively transforming the way medicine approaches prevention. “This is an approach that is both radical and common sense,” Kennedy said in the video.
In a separate commentary piece for the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy concluded, “The chronic disease epidemic is the most urgent and costly health crisis in America today. We can’t afford another decade of delay.”