Ten universities are working on a national effort to create an obesity curriculum for medical schools.
"Because obesity is newly categorized as a disease, there isn’t a lot of material in curriculums in many medical schools across the country, so we are implementing 12 free education modules about the comprehensive diagnosis and treatment of obesity into our curriculum," Kim Pfotenhauer, DO, assistant dean for clerkship education at the East Lansing-based Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine, said in a Dec. 11 university news release shared with Becker's.
Here are four things to know:
1) The Obesity Society is a two-year quality improvement project to enhance obesity education by creating a comprehensive, competency-based curriculum called FORWARD Education QI Obesity Project. The goal is to address the national and global need for comprehensive medical training in obesity care, according to a 2023 news release. Funding for the project was supplied through an educational grant from Novo Nordisk.
2) A recent society survey found that one-third of medical schools do not have an obesity education program and only 10% felt that their medical students were "very prepared" to manage patients with obesity.
"I think that patients who are overweight or obese feel a lot of judgement and bias," Dr. Pfotenhauer said. "They often aren’t treated as if they have a chronic disease, and we need to shift that framework. We can treat this and now we have more tools to use than just lifestyle changes. While lifestyle changes will always be important, we recognize the complexities of this disease, and we are beginning to treat it holistically. "
3) In the project's first year, it identified gaps in obesity training and how schools can fill those gaps and collaborate on new content. In its second year, the partnership is focusing on implementing obesity educational curriculum and outcomes, including creating 12 free education modules about the comprehensive diagnosis and treatment of obesity, which will eventually be available through an open-source website.
4) Here are the 10 schools participating in the society:
- MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine
- Loma Linda (Calif.) University School of Medicine
- University of Texas-San Antonio Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine
- Howard University (Washington, D.C.)
- University of Illinois Chicago
- Manoa John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawai’i (Honolulu)
- University of California-San Diego
- Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland)
- Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine (Rochester, Mich.)
- Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine