Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr unveiled a new effort on Thursday aimed at increasing the amount of nutrition education taught in medical schools.
For months, Kennedy has urged medical schools to expand their nutrition curriculum and warned that institutions refusing to do so could face cuts to federal funding, while those that adopt the changes may receive public acknowledgment.
The health secretary has repeatedly argued that physicians receive insufficient training in nutrition, which he believes contributes to a healthcare system that relies more on medication to manage chronic disease than on diet-based prevention – an argument many experts consider overly simplistic.
According to senior officials at the US department of health and human services, 53 medical schools had voluntarily signed on to the initiative as of Thursday morning. The institutions will administer 40 hours of nutrition education or a 40-hour competency equivalent starting in autumn 2026, Kennedy said at an event.
“This is how we implement the Maha [Make America Healthy Again] agenda,” Kennedy said as he debuted what he called “a transformative breakthrough in medical education that will reshape the way we train doctors in our country”.
Under the initiative, medical schools are asked to evaluate how much nutrition instruction they currently offer, designate a faculty member responsible for overseeing nutrition education, and publish a webpage describing how the school will reach a total of 40 hours of nutrition training for medical students.
The announcement marks a step forward for Kennedy’s Maha agenda within the medical community. Many doctors and researchers have previously criticized the secretary’s positions, particularly on vaccines, as conspiratorial or lacking scientific grounding.
At the same time, the effort reflects a broader push by the Trump administration to promote its ideological priorities within American higher education, a shift from the country’s longstanding norm of academic independence.
Kennedy’s plan has managed to attract support from medical schools across both Republican and Democratic-leaning states. Among the institutions backing the effort are the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the University of Florida, the University of Kentucky, the University of Oklahoma and Texas Tech University, according to the New York Times. Additional participants include the University of California, Irvine, George Washington University, New York University and Tufts University.
Several highly ranked universities that had previously reached funding-related agreements with the Trump administration, including Brown University, Columbia University and Cornell University, chose not to join the initiative despite operating some of the country’s most respected medical schools.
In remarks last week, Kennedy also suggested he may seek to remove certain foods from the market if companies cannot demonstrate that the products are safe. During those comments, he specifically mentioned two major coffee chains.
“We’re going to ask Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks: ‘Show us the safety data that show that it’s OK for a teenage girl to drink an iced coffee with 115 grams of sugar in it,’” Kennedy told an audience in Texas. “I don’t think they’re gonna be able to do it.”
