Patient Centered Medical Home Cooking: Community Culinary Workshops for Multidisciplinary Teams.

Area of Science:

• Primary Care Medicine
• Medical Education
• Nutritional Science

Background:

• Primary care teams often lack training in nutritional counseling and lifestyle prevention for chronic disease management.
• Interactive culinary medicine education demonstrates potential for enhancing medical professionals' knowledge and confidence.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the impact of a culinary medicine curriculum on the self-reported efficacy of a multidisciplinary primary care team in nutritional counseling.
• To investigate differences in efficacy improvements between medical staff and students.

Main Methods:

• A 4-hour interactive culinary medicine workshop was conducted in a community primary care setting.
• Participants (medical staff and students) completed pre- and post-workshop surveys on attitudes and confidence in nutritional counseling.
• Statistical analyses included Chi-square and Sign Rank tests to evaluate changes and role-based differences.

Main Results:

• Thirteen out of seventeen measured attitudes and efficacy indicators showed significant improvement post-workshop.
• Pre-workshop role-based differences in confidence and attitudes diminished after the training.
• The intervention effectively enhanced self-reported efficacy across the multidisciplinary team.

Conclusions:

• Delivering culinary medicine curricula within primary care medical homes offers an innovative approach to improving nutritional education.
• This collaborative model enhances the team's capacity for nutritional counseling in chronic disease prevention.
• Community-based culinary medicine training is a viable strategy for upskilling primary care professionals.