New doctors will now be required to pass medical licensing exams that require a strong knowledge of nutrition-based medicine because of a Trump administration push to reform nutrition education in medical schools and nursing programs.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education announced on Monday that several medical education, testing, accreditation, and certification organizations that license physicians and nurses in the United States have partnered with the Trump administration to require new nutrition-based content at each of the steps involved in obtaining a medical license.
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HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during a press event about the change that the new content additions to post-education licensing exams will “put nutrition back where it belongs, at the center of medical education.”
“We’re training future physicians to address the root causes of diseases, not simply manage their consequences,” Kennedy said. “And we’re building a medical system that gives doctors better tools, patients better information, and families a better chance to live long and healthy lives.”
Kennedy said nutrition education will now account for roughly 15% of the content across the three-step medical exam sequencing in the U.S., assessing nutrition and its clinical application.
“That means nutrition will no longer sit at the margins of medical education,” Kennedy said. “It will shape what students learn, what physicians master, what licensing boards assess, and ultimately how patients receive care.”
The nine leading organizations in the U.S. responsible for managing physician licensing voluntarily agreed to the plans, including the National Board of Medical Examiners, the National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners, and the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education.
The effort builds upon the administration’s yearlong project of gaining voluntary support from medical schools to require new medical students to complete a minimum of 40 hours of nutrition-based medicine education during their four-year graduate programs.
In March, HHS announced that 52 medical schools had agreed to boost their nutrition curriculum. Kennedy said on Monday that 19 other medical schools joined the nutrition education pledge, bringing the total to 73 out of nearly 160.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid and former professor of surgery at Columbia University, said medical schools neglecting to provide graduates with comprehensive nutrition education create a knowledge gap that doctors often do not fill once they are out practicing.
“If we don’t learn these things in medical school, they cannot be important, because everything we learn that’s important about health, we’re going to learn in medical school,” Oz said. “The arrogance that’s associated with not learning about nutrition in medical school contaminates the entire medical space.”
Oz also said that 24 states “got more money” from the Rural Health Transformation Fund, passed in the Republican spending bill last year, if they agreed to require nutrition education as part of their continuing medical education credits mandated by states to maintain physician licensing.
According to HHS, chronic disease and mental health expenditures cost $4.4 trillion each year, and an estimated 1 million Americans die from “food-related chronic illnesses” annually.
The Trump administration has made efforts to lower drug costs through initiatives such as the TrumpRx.gov discount prescription website and negotiations with pharmaceutical companies, but Oz said preventive medicine through proper nutrition is the long-term strategy to reduce the burden of healthcare costs.
“What’s the best way to reduce the amount of money we spend on drugs? Not to need them. You cannot sprinkle Lipitor on a kielbasa and expect to save money,” Oz said, referencing a common cholesterol medication.
Kennedy applauded the medical accrediting, certifying, testing, and education organizations for working with him despite disagreeing with the Trump administration and with him personally on other political and health policy issues.
Various medical organizations, including American Medical Association, have had several prominent rifts with Kennedy over his Make America Healthy Again agenda, particularly on changes to the childhood vaccine schedule and infectious disease policy. But the secretary praised the groups for making the voluntary policy shift.
The secretary said political polarization has grown “in a way that humanity has never encountered before,” in part because social media enhances divisions through echo chambers.
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Kennedy said the political violence and polarization of the 1960s “exhausted itself with the assassinations of my uncle and then my father,” referring to former President John F. Kennedy and former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
“Clearly, what we need to do is we need to start learning to talk to each other again, even with people with whom we disagree, and we need to be able to come together on issues on which we can find common ground,” Kennedy said.
