Nutrition Curriculum

At the University of Maryland School of Medicine, we understand the importance of nutrition and its intersection with health and wellness. We weave our nutrition education throughout the curriculum, with the assistance of our Embedded Content Lead for Nutrition, Dr. Mihir Patel.

Students begin their nutrition education in their first block of medical school, learning about the biochemistry of nutrients, nutrient deficiencies, and healthy eating patterns. While traditional medical school teaching has focused simply on clinical signs of deficiencies, we have supplemented this by bringing food and diet into the prevention and treatment of these deficiencies. We discuss real foods that are sources of these nutrients and then integrate that information into overall healthy eating patterns. When discussing dietary intake, we emphasize eating patterns that are healthy for physical and emotional health as well as sustainable and important for planetary health and the environment.

Our courses include nutritional approaches to common neurological diseases, how nutrition affects bones and musculature, and the importance of nutrition in the different stages of human life. We address nutrition as it pertains to obesity, diabetes, overall healthy eating patterns, as well as social determinants of health and overall food policy. Our students participate in a clinical correlate with a patient who volunteers her time to discuss obesity and nutrition with them. Additionally, students are taught how to take a nutritional history by certified dieticians. Our last block of the preclinical curriculum contains a summary of nutrition, nutrients, deficiencies, food security, and healthy eating patterns.

Additionally, students can do a 4th year nutrition elective where they work with different disciplines for the whole month including an obesity medicine physician, a lifestyle medicine physician, and dieticians, with the opportunity to use nutritional principles to treat children and adults. Students also have the opportunity do nutrition research.