Undergraduate Module in Nutrition

The WHO recurrently acknowledges that a balanced and varied diet can dramatically increase life expectancy, with unhealthy diets considered a primary factor of overweight and obesity and noncommunicable diseases occurrence (e.g. cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes or cancer). The WHO also found that 80% of heart diseases and strokes could be prevented by simply limiting lifestyle risk-factors. 

Given this well-known link between nutrition and health, SAFE was selected to coordinate an Erasmus+ Project in nutrition which aims to further mainstream nutrition into current medical school curricula.

The 2022-2024 project, entitled “Undergraduate Medical University Module in Nutrition: Connecting health and nutrition to help reducing non-communicable diseases,” will be drawing a connection between nutrition and health through the design and implementation of an undergraduate study programme in nutrition.Expected outputs include a teacher’s coursebook, a student handbook, as well as an online platform introducing the module and the concept of nutrition. 

Courses

The main objective of this project was to enable future doctors to improve patients’ eating habits to move away from instant and automatic medication. After enhancing the nutritional knowledge of future doctors, the module will be based on a practical learning approach. Students will have to learn the nutritional response adapted to each case to be able to see which nutritional solution is the most suitable. 
This project designed and implemented an undergraduate study program in nutrition, which will be automatically certified through ECTS credits (4 to 6 ECTS will be granted through the module depending on the university). The module will be taught in Medical Faculties across three different EU countries (Italy, Poland, and Belgium). The primary target group is composed of university students at an undergraduate level in medical faculties in these three EU countries. The secondary target group is professors teaching within the three partner universities who will have the opportunity to provide innovative tools to their students on nutrition and health.

The project, which officially started on February 1^st, 2022 will run for 30 months and will be developed alongside :

• Società Scientifica de Nutrizione Vegetale – SONVE (Italy)
• EMOTIFOOD (Italy)
• University of Rzeszow (Poland)
• University of Liège (Belgium),
• La Sapienza University (Italy). 

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 Stay tuned for more info on our Erasmus in Nutrition!