April 17, 2026 — Starting in the fall 2026 semester, University of Florida medical students will have the opportunity to take a new nutrition elective course developed by the UF College of Medicine and UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

Food is Medicine: Advanced Clinical Nutrition and Nutrition Optimization will be led by Amy Sheer, M.D. ’15, M.P.H., an associate professor in the division of general internal medicine, and Beth Gankofskie, Ph.D., M.S., R.D.N., the undergraduate dietetics director in the UF College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Food Science and Human Nutrition Department. The course aims to equip future physicians with the knowledge and skills to counsel patients on evidence-based nutrition.

“Nutrition and lifestyle medicine are the first line to treat, prevent and reverse a lot of our chronic diseases,” Sheer said. “When our medical students see patients in clinic, they want to be able to have a conversation with them about not just the foods they’re eating but also their disease processes and how nutrition can help.”

As part of the College of Medicine’s history of excellence in medical education, nutrition has been built into all four years of medical students’ comprehensive training. Every student takes a one-week nutrition intensive in their first year, followed by core courses throughout their two didactic years that touch on important topics like macro and micronutrients, how to screen for food insecurity and discuss nutrition when taking patient histories, healthy eating, special diets and the role of nutrition in diabetes. Nutrition is a key element of the Lifestyle Medicine Discovery Pathway launched by Sheer and clinical assistant professor Romeena Lee, D.O,., M.P.H., in 2025 — one of 11 tracks that students can choose for research, workshops and field experience. In years 3 and 4, clinical rotations dive deeper into nutrition and patient care, exploring dietary deficiencies and recommendations, obesity treatment and prevention and healthy lifestyles for specific patient populations like children, pregnant and nursing mothers and women in menopause.

Food is Medicine will complement these important pillars as one of five nutrition curriculum electives available to third- and fourth-year students.

Sheer first got the idea for Food is Medicine a year ago when she and Gankofskie met at a conference. They had overlapping interests and decided to redesign one of Gankofskie’s dietetics courses into an asynchronous, two-week intensive for medical students, blending expertise from both disciplines. The new course focuses heavily on medical case studies and covers topics like the role of nutrition in health and disease prevention, how to perform nutritional assessments and develop evidence-based dietary plans, when to refer patients to a dietitian and how to counsel and motivate patients from all backgrounds and cultures. It also aims to teach students critical evaluation skills for supplements, popular or fad diets, nutrition research and more.

This knowledge is an important foundation for clinical practice in many medical specialties. Pediatricians, for example, often discuss healthy foods with families in their practice. Psychiatrists care for patients who may have severe eating disorders. And endocrinologists can help patients manage their diabetes through diet.

Ultimately, Sheer and Gankofskie hope medical students who take the course leave with the confidence and excitement to have these kinds of big-picture discussions with their patients.

“We want them to enjoy the two weeks that they take the course with us and find it engaging and interesting, so that it actually adds to their toolkit,” Gankofskie said.

Abby Balaraman, an alumna of UF’s undergraduate nutritional sciences program, is one of the medical students looking forward to taking Food is Medicine. It’s a subject near and dear to her heart as one of the first members of the Lifestyle Medicine Discovery Pathway and a former clinical researcher at the Yale School of Medicine, where she studied the intersection of obesity, bariatric surgery, eating behaviors and obesity pharmacotherapy. Balaraman also serves as founder and co-president of the medical student lifestyle medicine interest group and a data coordinator for the Mobile Food Pharmacy at UF’s free, student-run Equal Access Clinic Network.

“I am particularly excited about the interdisciplinary nature of the Food is Medicine elective,” she said. “A strong nutrition curriculum helps equip future physicians to approach these discussions in a more empathetic, nonjudgmental and patient-centered way. It also prepares us to have more practical, actionable discussions with patients, whether helping them make small, sustainable dietary changes or connecting them with appropriate resources such as dietitians or community programs.

“If we don’t learn how to use food as medicine, we are missing a critical piece of patient care.”