Jill Waalen, MD, MS, MPH, FACPM
ACPM President
As preventionists and promoters of health, food as foundational to health has always been in part of our Preventive Medicine wheelhouse. It’s been exciting to see the growing appreciation of this tenet in the rest of medicine – through development of Lifestyle Medicine as a specialty to Food as Medicine as a movement to the strengthening of nutrition education in medical schools as policy; all are efforts in which Preventive Medicine will continue to play a key role.
But, of course, as Preventive Medicine physicians, we look upstream as well. We know it’s not enough to know what to eat for health and encourage individuals to do so. Looking at systems issues to increase access to nutritious food is part of our bailiwick, too. From promoting community gardens to pushing for improved school lunches to addressing food deserts, we embrace food system issues at all levels as part of Preventive Medicine.
Recent developments have added new twists to this issue. The increasing number of people on GLP-1 receptor agonists eating less food means an increasing number of people becoming more acutely aware that the food they do eat needs to be more densely nutritious. Reports of scurvy and other nutritional deficiencies accompanying use of these drugs, although rare, confirms the need for heightened attention to nutrient-dense diets.
At the same time, the nutrition value of even nutritious food is understood to be dwindling, with estimates that fruits, vegetables and grains grown today contain up to 40% fewer nutrients compared with crops grown 60 years ago. This is just one issue bringing current agricultural practices under closer scrutiny as well as bringing a deeper appreciation of the interrelationship between agriculture and health, with meaningful change requiring cooperative input and action from both sectors.
It is with this backdrop that we are excited to focus this year’s Blumenthal lecture on October 21 on systems-level solutions for improving access to nutritious food for all. It is a fitting topic for the annual lecture series, which was established in honor of the work of Dr. Daniel Blumenthal, past ACPM president and advocate for health equity throughout his career.
The Blumenthal honoree this year is Stacy Dean, Executive Director of the Global Health Institute at George Washington University, who, along with ACPM Past President Dr. Michael Parkinson, will lead discussion on the most pressing current food system issues and the role of Preventive Medicine. She will be joined by a group of distinguished panelists who will share their varied perspectives; they include: Dr. Daphene Altema-Johnson, Senior Program Officer of Johns Hopkins Center for a Liveable Future; Dr. Kofi Essel, inaugural Food as Medicine Program Director for Elevance Health; and Dr. Anne Utech, National Executive Director of Nutrition and Food Services for the Veterans Health Administration, US Department of Veterans Affairs. Find more detail on Dr. Blumenthal and this year’s speakers here.
Your voice will be important in this discussion as well! We invite you to participate by joining us at the lecture live in Alexandria, VA on October 21 at 3 pm ET (email info@acpm.org for details) or to join the livestream here.
