Enhancing Medical Students' Competence in Nutrition through Culinary Medicine

The Food As Medicine grant initiative, offered by the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM), is a focused single-cycle, non-recurring effort to integrate nutrition and culinary medicine into osteopathic medical education (OME). Launched in the aftermath of a high-profile Food As Medicine program at Educating Leaders 2024, the initiative responds to a broad professional consensus about the need to better prepare future osteopathic physicians to employ nutrition as a clinical tool in preventing and managing chronic disease. At the 2024 conference, plenary and panel sessions engaged more than 500 osteopathic medical educators and culminated in a strategic framework and formal AACOM statement endorsing integration of nutrition education across the continuum of medical training. Building on that momentum, AACOM designed the grant to fund curriculum development, experiential learning, interprofessional collaboration, and clinical training in nutritional counseling within member colleges of osteopathic medicine (COMs).

ARCOM earned funding for their project to address the research question: How does a brief culinary medicine curriculum affect the nutrition knowledge, attitudes and beliefs and self-efficacy of first year osteopathic medical students, specifically in teaching nutrition education to pediatric populations from rural, underserved areas of Arkansas?