The overall goal of this proposal is to improve cancer-related nutrition knowledge and provide individual and small group nutrition-related experiences for medical students in order to enhance their ability to address nutrition issues as physicians in the future. We wish to instill the belief that nutrition is an important and effective way to decrease cancer risk using the experiences of University of Iowa and five other nationally known lecturers from four different cancer research institutions. Specifically, students will undergo self- assessment and experience the process of personal behavior change to achieve this goal. We will evaluate behavior change in actual clinical settings. Our audience will be medical students in Years 1 through 4 of the University of Iowa Roy and Lucille Carver College of Medicine, including medical students in the College of Public Health joint MPH/MD program.
Our aim i s also to disseminate both strategies and evaluation methods to other medial schools throughout the country.
Our specific aims i nclude: 1. To integrate nutrition principles related to cancer prevention into the medical school curriculum and public health graduate school programs. 2. To disseminate both learning strategies and evaluation techniques to medical schools throughout the U.S. To involve other medical schools throughout the U.S. and various departments within the University of Iowa Colleges of Public Health and Medicine so that the nutrition needs of patients of different ages, ethnic groups, and special needs within populations are addressed. A prototype of dissemination has, been piloted through the Nutrition Academic Award (NAA). 3. To continue existing and to develop new infrastructures to maintain nutrition and cancer prevention learning experiences throughout the four-year curriculum and beyond the life of this proposal. To promote research studies in nutrition and cancer prevention at the University of Iowa with dissemination packages for other medical schools to use in conjunction with units such as the NIH-funded General Clinical Research Center (GCRC).
