As Director of the Division of Nutrition at Harvard Medical School (HMS), Dr. Allan Walker will direct the development and implementation of a curriculum to teach nutrition principles and clinical practice skills for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, diabetes and obesity to medical students, house staff and practicing physicians. The nutrition theme will enrich and extend the current curriculum and core clinical clerkships and create a new elective clinical rotation.
The specific aims are to: 1) develop a four-year, cardiovascular disease specific nutrition curriculum for HMS students by a) developing didactic lectures; b) developing clinical cases based on patients in Dr. Welty's secondary prevention program, Heart and Sole, and women's and lipid clinics for case-based teaching; c) developing a teaching module on women, diet and heart disease in collaboration with the NIH funded Harvard Center of Excellence in Women's Health. All lectures, cases and minicourses will be Web-based for HMS students, other medical schools and as CME credit for practicing physicians; 2) add content to the clinical years by a) providing a Nutrition and Heart Disease Prevention Inpatient Teaching Service which will teach students to apply nutrition skills and knowledge on Medicine and Ambulatory Clerkships; b) adding a new outpatient Preventive Cardiology Clinical Rotation for medical students, residents and fellows; c) developing the Heart and Sole program on a Native-American reservation to provide an elective on nutrition and heart disease for medical students from many schools; and d) increasing research opportunities in nutrition and prevention of cardiovascular diseases; 3) designing and implementing faculty development and training materials; 4) evaluating the impact of the nutrition curriculum, a portion of which involves adding nutrition stations to the objective structured clinical exam (OSCE) already in place at HMS; the OSCE could be disseminated to other medical schools; and 5) broaden exposure to the heart- disease nutrition connection among health care professionals by providing a CME course and web site. This career award will establish Dr. Walker as a leader in medical education in nutrition, his long-term career goal.
