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Human health in peril: The need to upgrade medical education in light of COVID-19

While we might leave the COVID-19 pandemic behind, future health professionals are still confronted with another global phenomenon: the increasing pandemic of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Both issues are strongly interwoven, yet current medical education fails to address their syndemic nature a...

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Autores principales: Gatterer, Lukas, Kriwan, Fabian, Tanous, Derrick, Wirnitzer, Katharina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9574097/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36262279
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2022.999671
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author Gatterer, Lukas
Kriwan, Fabian
Tanous, Derrick
Wirnitzer, Katharina
author_facet Gatterer, Lukas
Kriwan, Fabian
Tanous, Derrick
Wirnitzer, Katharina
author_sort Gatterer, Lukas
collection PubMed
description While we might leave the COVID-19 pandemic behind, future health professionals are still confronted with another global phenomenon: the increasing pandemic of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Both issues are strongly interwoven, yet current medical education fails to address their syndemic nature accordingly. There is scientific consensus that (i) most emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, (ii) the overexploitation of earth's resources for animal protein production (i.e., tropical deforestation) rapidly escalates human contact with unknown pathogens, and (iii) people following a healthy plant-based diet present fewer rates of NCDs as well as severe illness and mortality from COVID-19. A shift toward whole food plant-based nutrition in the general population thus holds the potential to tackle both public health threats. We are convinced that it is every physician's responsibility to care for individual, public, and global health issues; however, future health professionals are not trained and educated regarding the health potential of plants and plant-based diets. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the urgent need for a “prevention first” approach. Therefore, in order to upgrade medical education worldwide and protect current and future human health properly, greater medical professional awareness of evidence on plant-based diets is urgently needed in classes, universities, and hospitals.
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spelling pubmed-95740972022-10-18 Human health in peril: The need to upgrade medical education in light of COVID-19 Gatterer, Lukas Kriwan, Fabian Tanous, Derrick Wirnitzer, Katharina Front Med (Lausanne) Medicine While we might leave the COVID-19 pandemic behind, future health professionals are still confronted with another global phenomenon: the increasing pandemic of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Both issues are strongly interwoven, yet current medical education fails to address their syndemic nature accordingly. There is scientific consensus that (i) most emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, (ii) the overexploitation of earth's resources for animal protein production (i.e., tropical deforestation) rapidly escalates human contact with unknown pathogens, and (iii) people following a healthy plant-based diet present fewer rates of NCDs as well as severe illness and mortality from COVID-19. A shift toward whole food plant-based nutrition in the general population thus holds the potential to tackle both public health threats. We are convinced that it is every physician's responsibility to care for individual, public, and global health issues; however, future health professionals are not trained and educated regarding the health potential of plants and plant-based diets. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the urgent need for a “prevention first” approach. Therefore, in order to upgrade medical education worldwide and protect current and future human health properly, greater medical professional awareness of evidence on plant-based diets is urgently needed in classes, universities, and hospitals. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-10-03 /pmc/articles/PMC9574097/ /pubmed/36262279 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2022.999671 Text en Copyright © 2022 Gatterer, Kriwan, Tanous and Wirnitzer. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Medicine
Gatterer, Lukas
Kriwan, Fabian
Tanous, Derrick
Wirnitzer, Katharina
Human health in peril: The need to upgrade medical education in light of COVID-19
title Human health in peril: The need to upgrade medical education in light of COVID-19
title_full Human health in peril: The need to upgrade medical education in light of COVID-19
title_fullStr Human health in peril: The need to upgrade medical education in light of COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed Human health in peril: The need to upgrade medical education in light of COVID-19
title_short Human health in peril: The need to upgrade medical education in light of COVID-19
title_sort human health in peril: the need to upgrade medical education in light of covid-19
topic Medicine
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9574097/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36262279
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2022.999671
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