19 more medical schools to require nutrition training in 2026

Nineteen more medical schools have agreed to require nutrition training, but the larger test is whether 40 hours will change how future doctors treat obesity, diabetes and other diet-linked disease. The new pledges bring the total number of participating schools to 73, while federal officials are trying to push nutrition deeper into the medical pipeline by pulling accrediting bodies, testing organizations and residency overseers into the same effort.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Education Department said on June 8 in Washington that they had hosted eight medical accreditors, assessors and organizations to announce reforms across medical education, testing, training and residency. The groups include the National Board of Medical Examiners, the National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation, the American Board of Medical Specialties, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine. HHS said the two testing boards would increase nutrition-based questions to about 15% of exam content, and that the department had developed 71 core nutrition competencies for schools that want to use a competency-based model.

The latest schools to sign on, including Florida Atlantic University, the University of Maryland and the University of Massachusetts, will require at least 40 hours of nutrition education or an equivalent competency requirement starting in fall 2026. That builds on an earlier wave of 53 medical schools across 31 states, showing the administration is trying to turn nutrition from an optional add-on into a standard part of medical training. Officials also said the pledge is voluntary, schools keep control over curriculum, and schools that fall short of the 40-hour benchmark will not be penalized.

The policy push is aimed at a system federal officials say has badly undershot the country’s chronic disease burden. HHS says the United States spends an estimated $4.4 trillion a year on chronic disease and mental health care, and that about one million Americans die each year from food-related chronic illnesses. The department also cited figures showing medical students received an average of 1.2 hours of formal nutrition education per year, that historically less than 1% of lecture hours in U.S. medical schools went to nutrition, that 75% of medical schools required no clinical nutrition classes as of 2024, and that only 14% of residency programs require a nutrition curriculum.

The effort did not begin with this week’s announcement. The Association of American Medical Colleges issued a call to action in November 2025 to strengthen nutrition education across medical schools and academic health systems, and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education convened a 2023 summit on nutrition in medical education with more than 100 stakeholders. Those moves, combined with the latest federal pledge drive, suggest the real question is no longer whether nutrition belongs in medical training, but whether a voluntary national framework can make it stick.