Physician-nutrition-specialist track: if we build it, will they come?

The Intersociety Professional Nutrition Education Consortium (IPNEC) has ma de substantial progress in its first 2 y. With support from 9 participating nutrition societies and certification organizations and with funding from the National Institutes of Health and several nutrition industry partners, a sustained, functioning consortium has been established. The consortium's 2 principal aims are to establish educational standards for fellowship trai ning of physician nutrition specialists (PNSs) and to create a unified mech anism for certifying physicians who are so trained. Its long-term goals are to increase the pool of PNSs to enable every US medical school to have at least one PNS on its faculty and to surmount obstacles that currently imped e the incorporation of nutrition education into the curricula of medical sc hools and residency programs. The consortium formulated and refined a parad igm for PNSs, conducted a national role delineation survey to define the sc ope of the discipline of clinical nutrition, and developed a preliminary cu rriculum template for training PNSs that can be completed in a minimum of 6 mo. IPNEC and its sponsoring societies are strategically positioned to pla y an important long-term role in nutrition education for physicians. We int end to continue soliciting broad input, especially from directors of fellow ship training programs in nutrition and closely related subspecialties; to develop the core content for fellowships in nutrition and related subspecia lties; and to initiate a unified PNS certification examination.