Educating health care professionals on the importance of proper diets. An online course on nutrition, health, and sustainability

Abstract

The majority of university curricula for health professionals does not incorporate courses on human nutrition and its links with human and planetary health. This primarily applies to medical and pharmacy students, who have important counselling roles and are at the forefront of public health. To address this important issue, EIT Food recently launched an online course on nutrition, health, and sustainability. Learners were able to provide feedback on the course through an end-of-course survey and social interaction on the FutureLearn platform. The course was very well attended worldwide and received positive feedback from learners. A total of 3,858 students enrolled in the program, from >20 countries. Learners reported inadequate training on nutrition in their own curriculum and indicated they would use key insights from the course to inform their own practice. This report provides insights from the course, which could be used as guidance for future initiatives.

Keywords:

• Nutrition
• education
• food sustainability
• health
• micronutrients
• micronutrients
• public health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This EIT Food activity has received funding from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union, under Horizon Europe, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. Dr. Stephen Devries; nonprofit Gaples Institute, Deerfield, Illinois, USA, provided very important advice.