208 - Bridging the Nutrition Education Gap: A New Portable Culinary Medicine Workshop for Clinicians

Session Description: Chronic disease affects 60% of Americans, costs $4.5 trillion annually, and is linked to lifestyle behaviors. Counseling can promote behavior change, but clinicians often lack the knowledge and skills to counsel patients effectively. Clinicians who practice healthful behaviors are more likely to counsel patients about these behaviors. This talk describes a portable culinary medicine workshop designed to address the gap in clinician nutrition and culinary education, improve clinician lifestyle behaviors related to food, and enhance patient care. The workshop blends didactic nutrition education with hands-on cooking to teach nutrition information, culinary skills, behavior change theory, and practical clinical strategies. The curriculum is adaptable for use in pop-up, portable, community, or teaching kitchens and includes an instructor’s guide, supply lists, recipes, slides, and evaluation questions. The goal of the workshop is to help clinicians model and counsel patients on healthful lifestyle behaviors to prevent and treat chronic disease. In addition, participants eat the food they cooked together which has been shown to reduce burnout.

Educational Gaps: Culinary medicine curricula that are easy to implement are not available in shared medical education resources. This session introduces clinicians to this newly available workshop for use in their own practices or organizations to promote worker health.. Surveys have shown that most clinicians do not feel equipped to provide nutrition counseling, a key component of preventing and treating chronic disease.

Is this session being sponsored by an ACOEM Section or Component?: No

Has this session previously been presented?: No

The AOHC 2026 theme is Healthy workers. Healthy world: Chronic disease is a major contributor to lost work productivity and poor health outcomes among workers. Occupational medicine professionals play a critical role in promoting worker and public health. Making information available about this easy-to-implement, evidence-based curriculum will increase access to a learning tool designed to enhance occupational medicine clinical practice and improve the health of the global workforce.