Nutrition education in the medical school curriculum: a proposal for action: a curriculum design.

Nutrition has been traditionally taught in medical schools with emphasis on clinical management of disease states with modified diets. However, the science of nutrition can no longer be considered only in terms of the diagnosis and treatment of nutritional deficiency diseases. Prevention of disease-care rather than cure-must be emphasized. Using the nutrition concepts that evolved from the 1972 Williamsburg Conference encompassing the science and the sociology of nutrition, the author offers a proposal for action-a sequential nutrition curriculum design for years, I, II, and III of undergraduate medical education based on the experiences of the Nutrition Division, Department of Community Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine-City University of New York.