Disclosure: As an affiliate for the Pediatric Nutrition for Professionals course, I receive a portion of the proceeds when the course is purchased through the link on my website at no extra cost to you. Thank you for helping me continue to provide free content on Wellness Pediatrician.

If you are a pediatrician or pediatric health professional and have an interest in pediatric nutrition and lifestyle medicine like me, the Pediatric Nutrition for Health Professionals is the course we have been waiting for.

The honest truth is we do not get enough education on nutrition during medical school. Not only that, but food trends are changing all the time which is confusing to patients and healthcare practitioners alike. As pediatricians we know you can’t extrapolate what is applicable to adults to children because they aren’t mini adults.

I started my deep dive into pediatric lifestyle medicine a few years ago and have spent hours learning about nutrition beyond what I learned in school. However, the courses I have taken thus far have all been adult centric. While the general concepts are applicable, it’s the nuances that are specific to children that sometimes get lost.

This is why I was so excited to hear that my colleagues at the Plant-Based Juniors Learning Center, including Alex Caspero, RD, Whitney English, RD and Reshma Shah, MD, created the Pediatric Nutrition For Health Professionals course to help busy clinicians like myself become educated on how to best help our pediatric patients and their families with their nutritional needs. Reshma Shah, MD is also the co-author of the book Nourish: The Definitive Plant-Based Nutrition Guide for Families.

Some of the questions answered by this course

• How to give specific nutrition advice to children and families at each life stage
• How to interpret BMI thoughtfully and in the context of the whole child and avoid weight stigmatization
• Which foods and in what quantity can you recommend to improve micronutrient deficiencies
• What you need to be aware of to avoid advice that can increase the risk of triggering disordered eating patterns
• How to support parents in promoting joy around eating
• How to best support children with different eating patterns
• How to open up a discussion about nutrition using motivational interviewing techniques

What you will learn

The Pediatric Nutrition for Health Professionals course is set up in a self-paced combination of both video and text, but is mostly text. The course takes you through these 12 modules:

• Introduction
• Why Focus on Nutrition (nutrition science and evidence-based dietary patterns)
• Childhood Nutrition: Current State and Future Direction (Dietary Guidelines for America 2020-2025)
• Minimizing our Forkprint (climate change and sustainability)
• Pediatric Nutrition Assessment and Feeding Dynamics (how to thoughtfully assess growth and avoid pitfalls)
• Macronutrients
• Micronutrients
• Nutrition through the Lifecycle Part 1: Preconception, Pregnancy, and Lactation
• Nutrition through the lifecycle part 2: Infancy, Childhood, and Adolescence
• Nutrition for Young Athletes
• Motivational Interviewing
• Culinary and Practical Application (Baby-led weaning, meal prep and batching, recipes)

The content of Pediatric Nutrition for Health Professionals is dense, but in a good way. While there is the expected education on micronutrients, macronutrients and general nutrition topics, it also includes education on planetary health, HAES (Healthy at Every Size), meal prepping, and motivational interviewing.

Pediatric Nutrition for Health Professionals provides an evidence-based, comprehensive and up to date overview of current dietary recommendations including a discussion of the latest American Academy of Pediatrics 2023 Clinical Practice Guideline for the Evaluation and Treatment of Children and Adolescents with Obesity.

You will complete this course with pediatric specific nutrition knowledge that is practical and actionable. They even include printable handouts and a recipe book to support you in the exam room. You will receive 35 hrs AMA PRA Category 1 credits/CEU credits after completing the course. You will also earn a certificate of completion and become qualified to join the Plant-Based Juniors’ Certified Practitioner Database, a registry for parents who are looking for health professionals highly trained in pediatric nutrition.

Investment

The Pediatric Nutrition for Health Professionals course opens for enrollment on 3/27/23 and is $300 off for the first week from 3/27/23-4/2/23 for an investment of $897 (after 4/2/23 it will be $1197).

Final Thoughts

I really appreciated the great care the writers of the course put into keeping the content inclusive of all dietary patterns while highlighting the benefits of adding plants to our diets. They focused on a “do no harm” approach when it comes to discussing weight in a sensitive manner. There are useful pearls to share with patients such as how to prepare beans to make them more digestible (i.e. less gas producing) and how to prepare food for parents who prefer a baby-led weaning approach to feeding. This course will give you the confidence to have a thoughtful discussion about growth and nutrition with patients and their families.