Culinary Medicine Training for Healthcare, Education & Foodservice Teams
Practical training that prepares your team to lead food and nutrition-based interventions with confidence.
Whether you’re launching a teaching kitchen, preparing clinical staff for RHTP-funded Food is Medicine programming, training faculty to deliver a new curriculum, or building a foodservice team’s nutrition skills from the ground up, I bring structured, hands-on training built around your organization’s timeline, staffing, and operational realities
The Capacity Gap
So you’ve secured the funding and the green light to move forward with a Food is Medicine or food and nutrition intervention. Great — now what? Building your infrastructure means more than program development — it means equipping your team with the skills to successfully lead it.
Staff preparation means training program leads on the technical and culinary skills to lead a hands-on cooking class, guidance on using and maintaining teaching kitchen equipment, and the operational rhythm of running a session — managing class flow, executing a cooking or skills demonstration, and adapting on the fly.
You wouldn’t throw a doctor into surgery without teaching them to use a scalpel, and you shouldn’t throw a culinary medicine practitioner into the kitchen without the know-how to do so. Training closes that gap, building the skills inside your organization so the program runs with confidence from day one.
Who Benefits from Training
Healthcare Systems & Medical Schools
Practical, food-first nutrition education is an expanding part of clinical training and patient care, but hands-on culinary programming remains a new discipline for most healthcare institutions. Clinical and program staff generally have limited experience leading a cooking class or facilitating hands-on nutrition education, which can leave even highly qualified teams feeling underprepared to run the program they’ve been asked to lead.
Universities & Academic Programs
Culinary medicine and Food is Medicine curricula are expanding well beyond medical schools into places like dietetics and nutrition programs, culinary arts departments, public health schools, and student wellness initiatives. For success, faculty need more than the curriculum itself — they need the technical and operational know-how to deliver it well. I train faculty to teach hands-on, culinary medicine content with the same confidence and command they bring to their subject matter expertise.
RHTP-Funded & Other Grant-Funded Programs
Securing funding rarely comes with the internal capacity to deploy it. Organizations awarded Rural Health Transformation Program or similar Food is Medicine funding often face a short window to put dollars to use and a nutrition education program to show for it, without yet having a team equipped to run it. Getting staff ready to lead that programming on that timeline is a significant lift — and not one to navigate with an unproven partner. I bring the track record of building these programs from the ground up, so your team gets both a trusted guide through the deadline and the skills to deliver with confidence once it’s here.
Foodservice Teams
Foodservice teams often have strong nutrition knowledge or culinary skill — rarely the combination of both to prepare food that meets nutritional standards and tastes good. Whether it’s training staff on healthy food preparation technique or building the foundational skills to run a teaching kitchen, as a chef, registered dietitian, and educator, I bring both sides of that equation to your team. I work with:
- Senior living & long-term care
- School & university foodservice
- Hospital foodservice
- Other institutional settings
Training Formats & Services
However your program takes shape, I build the training around it — from one-time staff onboarding to ongoing, CME-eligible education for your team.
- In-Person Training — hands-on, live instruction for staff, faculty, or foodservice teams, delivered on-site
- Virtual Training — real-time instruction for distributed teams, wherever they're located
- Self-Paced & Asynchronous Training — custom online modules teams can complete on their own schedule
- Train-the-Trainer — preparing your team to teach and lead RHTP-funded, Food is Medicine, or other programs themselves, so the work runs without ongoing outside support
Case Study: Culinary Medicine Faculty Training
The Opportunity
Universities launching a new culinary medicine curriculum need faculty who can do more than teach the material — they need to navigate a working kitchen environment, manage a room during a live cooking class, and guide students or patients through hands-on food preparation with the same confidence they bring to a lecture hall.
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The Approach
Culinary Medicine Consulting leads a multi-day, on-site culinary medicine training built on the “see one, do one, teach one” model used in medical education. Training begins with hands-on preparation — getting faculty comfortable with the kitchen space, equipment, and ingredients, working through recipe and lesson logistics, and troubleshooting the practical details of running a class before participants are in the room. From there, faculty take part as students in the first of three live classes with health professionals, students, or community members, co-lead the second, and run the third independently with built-in feedback and troubleshooting mechanisms.
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The Result
Faculty leave prepared to run culinary medicine classes independently, with a repeatable training model that has supported new programs at institutions across the country.
Frequently Asked Question
Does our staff need a culinary background to go through training?
No. Training is designed to meet staff where they are — some come from a fully clinical or academic background with little kitchen experience, others already have strong culinary skills but need the teaching and facilitation side. The training adapts to close whichever gap is actually there.
Is training different for faculty versus foodservice or clinical staff?
Yes. Faculty training focuses on confidently delivering curriculum in a live teaching kitchen setting. Foodservice and clinical team training focuses more on translating nutrition standards into food that works at scale. Both use the same hands-on model, adapted to the audience and setting.
How long does training take?
It depends on scope and format. A focused session can run one to two sessions on-site; a full train-the-trainer engagement typically spans multiple sessions over several days. Timelines are scoped around the team’s starting point and goals.
Can training be delivered virtually?
Yes. Training is available in-person, live online, or self-paced and asynchronous — or a mix, depending on schedules and locations across a team.
Is training eligible for CME or CE credit?
In many cases, yes. Training can be structured so CME or CE credit is available when appropriate.
We have grant funding with a short spend deadline — can training help us move quickly?
Yes — this comes up often with organizations funded through the Rural Health Transformation Program or similar grants. Training is one of the fastest ways to convert funding into a running program, since it builds staff capability directly rather than requiring a lengthy program build first.
Can training scale from a small group to an entire team?
Yes. Some organizations train a small group of “champions” to lead ongoing programming; others need broader staff-wide training. Scope is built around team size and program goals.
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