The Weill Cornell Friedman Nutrition Program is being designed to provide Weill Cornell Medicine students with knowledge and skills to understand the role of nutrition science and practice in health and disease. The effort spans all phases of the medical school curriculum and will enhance its existing core foundation of nutrition and metabolism. Under the leadership and guidance of Dr. Yoon Kang, Senior Associate Dean of Education and the Richard P. Cohen, MD Associate Professor of Medical Education, the curriculum leadership team at Weill Cornell Medicine has moved forward with the first phase of implementation of the Friedman Nutrition Program Core Curriculum for our medical students. The curriculum leadership team performed a careful analysis of current Weill Cornell Medicine curricular offerings in nutrition and inflammation and identified areas of potential enhancement as well as gaps in important nutrition concepts in order to identify topics that would align with cutting edge scientific advances and public health needs. The first three sessions were delivered in the fall semester of 2021 to over 100 first-year Weill Cornell students in the required Essential Principles of Medicine course. The sessions were titled “Microbiome, Nutrition and Immunity,” “Mycobiota, Nutrition and immunity” and “Metabolic Health and Cancer.” The sessions were timed to build on core concepts and introduced students to critically important links between intrinsic gastrointestinal flora and the immune system, as well as the role of nutrition and metabolism in cancer biology.
As the first-year medical students enter their second semester, sessions are being developed in the Health, Illness and Disease course. These sessions will apply important concepts about nutrition in context as students learn about the different organ systems. For example, as students learn about the heart, a session on dietary interventions in cardiovascular health and disease will be enhanced and incorporated into the Friedman Program. Additional sessions being developed or enhanced will cover areas such as nutritional deficiencies, digestion and absorption, nutrition and kidney health and dietary management of diabetes mellitus. These will be iteratively launched in the 2022 Spring Semester. Additionally, in connection with the Food and Nutrition Program at NewYork-Presbyterian, a Friedman nutrition lecture and interactive session on management of nutritional needs in post-operative patients has been developed and will be incorporated into the required Surgery Clerkship for third-year Weill Cornell Medicine students in spring 2022.
Future efforts will focus on development of an elective in-depth nutrition curriculum for interested Weill Cornell Medicine students, partnering with the Division of Nutritional Sciences in the Cornell College of Human Ecology. These efforts will include providing medical students with customized access to a menu of state-of-the-art e-learning modules developed through eCornell. A long-term goal of the Friedman Center remains providing in-depth training to students at Weill Cornell Medicine in order to promote future scholarly activities in nutritional sciences, the microbiota and human health and disease and this will be developed in more depth in 2021-22 as we incorporate these projects into the Area of Concentration Course.