“The goal is to help physicians understand the changes their patients are being asked to make when they have to adopt a new lifestyle to improve health outcomes,” stated Jennifer Dalton, director of the University’s didactic program in dietetics. “This is the perfect partnership between the dietetic profession and medical profession to harness our strengths to benefit patient outcomes.”
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Dr. Josephine Elrod, a family medical physician affiliated with Grandview Medical Center, stated physicians receive little nutrition education in medical school and residency, and there’s a need to be better educated in addressing food and lifestyle issues.
Elrod said culinary medicine uses food in addition to traditional medicine to treat and prevent disease. Each session of the program examines a case study related to a disease, such as hypertension, and diet choices that affect it. Sessions also address issues faced by patients that lead to poor food choices, such as having limited time, money and access to healthy food in Dayton’s food desert.
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The organizations stated the culinary medicine program is funded by Grandview Hospital Foundation and is modeled after Tulane University’s teaching kitchen, which was the first to be implemented at a medical school.
“We are excited to be the leaders in Ohio and the Midwest,” Elrod said.
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