American College of Lifestyle Medicine supports HHS call for urgent nutrition education reform in U.S. medical schools

Since it was founded in 2004, ACLM has delivered more than 1.2 million hours of nutrition and lifestyle medicine education to physicians and other health professionals.

ST. LOUIS, Aug. 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) today announced its support of the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Aug. 27 call for comprehensive nutrition education reforms in U.S. medical schools. ACLM leaders emphasized the urgent need for physicians and other health professionals to receive evidence-based training in nutrition for the treatment, remission, and prevention of chronic diseases throughout their undergraduate and graduate (residency and fellowship) medical school years.

"Despite the overwhelming evidence linking diet to health outcomes, many physicians receive too little formal education in this area," said ACLM President Padmaja Patel, MD, DipABLM, FACLM, CPE. "ACLM applauds this initiative and stands ready to continue to provide the expertise and evidence-based resources to help medical schools and residency programs integrate meaningful nutrition education into their curricula. It is essential that physicians be equipped to help patients make healthy, sustainable lifestyle changes if we are to reduce the U.S. burden of chronic disease."

Since it was founded in 2004, ACLM has delivered more than 1.2 million hours of nutrition and lifestyle medicine education to physicians and other health professionals. As the only medical professional organization advancing nutrition and lifestyle medicine in undergraduate medical schools (UME), graduate residency and fellowship programs (GME) and continuing medical education (CME), ACLM stands ready to help expedite the desired reforms with existing curricula, programs and partnerships:

• ACLM and the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville (SOMG) partnered in 2022 to provide LMEd, an open-access, competency-aligned medical school curricula that supports national standards and offers a pathway to achieving tiered ACLM curriculum certification to support and recognize the integration of effective lifestyle medicine and nutrition education. To date, ACLM has granted nine medical schools certification in nutrition and lifestyle medicine.
• Student- and trainee-initiated Lifestyle Medicine Interest Groups have been established at 200 academic and health institutions.  
• The Lifestyle Medicine Residency Curriculum (LMRC) fills the nutrition and lifestyle medicine gap in resident education. Since its launch in 2018, the LMRC has rapidly expanded to more than 450 residency programs nationwide.
• ACLM offers more than 100 hours of accredited online courses that include a multi-module Food as Medicine series and an annual conference, ensuring clinicians can obtain and maintain board certification and apply lifestyle medicine tools supported by the latest evidence in patient care.
• The Lifestyle Medicine 101 Curriculum can be tailored to a variety of settings to educate audiences about the basics of lifestyle medicine.
• A new offering is the open-source Culinary Medicine Program and Curriculum.
• ACLM also provides an extensive library of nutrition-related patient-facing educational resources, as well as clinical practice tools—all designed to support seamless integration of nutrition into clinical practice.

"When it comes to incorporating nutrition and other lifestyle medicine principles, medical schools and residency programs often face barriers, such as curricular overload, limited faculty expertise, and misconceptions about accreditation and assessment," said ACLM Medical Director of Education Brenda Rea, MD, DrPH, PT, RD, DipABLM, Lifestyle Medicine Intensivist. "But by leveraging already available ACLM resources and collaborating strategically, schools can embed lifestyle medicine into existing structures without starting from scratch. This is a tremendous opportunity to prepare the next generation of physicians to treat the root cause of chronic disease and help patients restore their health."

ACLM member and partner Jennifer Trilk, PhD, FACSM, DipACLM, professor and director of Lifestyle Medicine Programs at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville (SOMG), has been teaching nutrition and lifestyle medicine at the school since its inception in 2012. SOMG is an ACLM Platinum Plus Certified Medical School for its inclusion of lifestyle medicine. 

"Our students receive over 100 hours of required nutrition and lifestyle medicine training across the four years of their medical education," she said. "They learn the biomedical science mechanisms and the behavior change skills in the classroom, which is reinforced in our Culinary Medicine classes and in clinic for experiential learning. We are encouraged to see HHS calling for nation-wide training for our doctors that food truly is medicine, and that lifestyle behaviors impact chronic disease risk. That's why nutrition must be at the heart of healthcare."

About ACLM®
The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) is the nation's medical professional society advancing the field of lifestyle medicine as the foundation of a redesigned, value-based and equitable healthcare delivery system, essential to achieving the Quintuple Aim and whole-person health. ACLM represents, advocates for, trains, certifies, and equips its members to identify and eradicate the root cause of chronic disease by optimizing modifiable risk factors. ACLM is filling the gaping void of lifestyle medicine in medical education, providing more than 1.2 million hours of lifestyle medicine education to physicians and other health professionals since 2004, while also advancing research, clinical practice and reimbursement strategies.

SOURCE American College of Lifestyle Medicine