Our Programs
The Culinary Medicine program offers interactive electives, service-learning opportunities and interdisciplinary learning experiences for students across KU Medical Center.
While 30–40 medical students participate annually in formal Culinary Medicine electives, the program’s service learning, community partnerships and campus collaborations extend its impact to a much broader population across the university and surrounding community.
Campus Integration & Collaboration
The Culinary Medicine program serves as a connector for Food Is Medicine efforts across the University of Kansas Medical Center and The University of Kansas Health System.
By aligning educational programs and community partnerships, the program helps bridge disciplines and create shared opportunities for learners, faculty and community members. This approach supports a more coordinated and scalable model for integrating nutrition, food access and lifestyle medicine into education and future clinical care.
Food is Medicine
Our program is grounded in the national Food Is Medicine movement, which integrates nutrition-based interventions into health care to prevent and manage disease.
This approach recognizes access to nutritious food as a critical component of health and emphasizes practical, scalable strategies to reduce disease burden across communities.
What is Culinary Medicine?
Culinary medicine is an evidence-based approach to medicine that combines nutrition science with culinary expertise to empower individuals to manage and even prevent chronic disease through mindful dietary choices.
Medical centers across the country have developed their own teaching models to support culinary medicine education. At KU Medical Center, culinary medicine serves as the practical bridge between nutrition knowledge and real-world application—translating clinical recommendations into actionable daily behaviors. Learn more about what KU Medical Center’s Culinary Medicine program offers our learners.
Learner Development
Deliver experiential, interprofessional training that builds nutrition counseling competency, empathy and patient-centered communication across clinical settings.
Patient and Community Impact
Extend the reach of culinary medicine beyond the classroom through community engagement, service learning and partnerships that promote nutrition skills and chronic disease prevention across a range of populations.
Workforce and Systems Impact
Advance Food Is Medicine as a core clinical competency across undergraduate and graduate medical education at KU Medical Center and The University of Kansas Health System, aligning education, patient care and community engagement.
Integration with Lifestyle Medicine Training
The Culinary Medicine program plays a key role in the Certificate of Distinction in Lifestyle Medicine for medical students, where nutrition is one of the core pillars.
Culinary medicine experiences provide applied, experiential training that complements the certificate curriculum, allowing learners on our campuses in Kansas City, Salina and Wichita to translate lifestyle medicine principles into practical skills for patient care.
Electives - Groups of 8–12 medical students rotate alongside dietetics students through three-day blocks covering food insecurity and food systems education through service learning, food allergies, sodium and hands-on culinary training using Health meets Food® modules. The Farm to Table to Clinic elective, offered in the summer, deepens student learning with a 4–8 week interdisciplinary course exploring food access, gardening, local eating and community outreach, integrated with student-selected cooking modules.
Volunteering - Students engage with community partners such as Kanbe’s Markets to recover and sort produce, explore food access challenges, and connect these experiences to patient care.
School of Medicine students – 30–40 students participate annually through Culinary Medicine electives offered 3–4 times per year. Students are placed in these electives through a competitive lottery system.
School of Health Professions students – Graduate students in the Department of Dietetics and Nutrition support Culinary Medicine as teaching assistants and near-peer learners, adding interprofessional perspectives while strengthening their own applied skills.
Residents and Fellows – Residents take part in challenges such as the WIC Box Challenge, participate in other Culinary Medicine modules and garden-based wellness activities. Fellows in the Allergy/Immunology Fellowship program participate in food allergy focused modules with garden-based learning. While current offerings have primarily consisted of individual or pilot experiences, the program is actively working to expand toward more consistent, longitudinal Culinary Medicine programming within graduate medical education.
Program Growth and Future Direction
The Culinary Medicine program continues to expand its reach across undergraduate and graduate medical education.
Building on early pilot experiences with residents and fellows, the program is developing more consistent, longitudinal Culinary Medicine opportunities within graduate medical education. These efforts aim to further integrate nutrition, food access and lifestyle medicine into clinical training and patient care.