The Make Hospital Food Healthier pledge<\/a> encourages hospitals to align menus and food-service practices with federal dietary guidelines when clinically appropriate and feasible. Recommendations include limiting ultra-processed foods and sugary drinks and emphasizing fruits, vegetables and whole grains.<\/p>\nKennedy is asking all of the medical schools in the country to consider promoting the initiative. He said so far, 80 schools have signed on. He talked about the quality of hospital food.<\/p>\n
\u201cIts low quality food, it has lots of sugars and salts and other ingredients that aggravated poor health,\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n
Participants included leaders from local hospitals, health systems and medical schools.<\/p>\n
Rep. Aaron Bean<\/p>\n
Dr. James Toldi, dean of Lincoln Memorial University\u2019s Orange Park campus \u2014 signed the medical school nutrition education commitment<\/p>\n
Dr. Aaron Carpenter, president of North Florida for Nemours Children\u2019s Health \u2014 signed the Healthy Hospital Pledge<\/p>\n
Dr. Morhaf Ibrahim, founder and president of Ibrahim Heart Clinic and PremierCardia<\/p>\n
Scott Kashman, CEO of Ascension St. Vincent\u2019s Health System in Northeast Florida<\/p>\n
Dr. Karthik Krishnamurthy, Mohs surgeon at Parks Dermatology Center<\/p>\n
Dr. Jason McConnell, president of Lincoln Memorial University \u2014 signed the medical school nutrition education commitment<\/p>\n
Dr. Teanna Moore, dean and chief academic officer of Lincoln Memorial University\u2019s DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine<\/p>\n
Dr. Stephen Motew, president and system CEO of UF Health \u2014 the University of Florida\u2019s medical school signed the commitment<\/p>\n
Chad Patrick, CEO of HCA Florida Orange Park Hospital<\/p>\n
Dr. Kent Thielen, CEO of Mayo Clinic in Florida<\/p>\n
Dr. Christopher Reeder, dean of Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine-Jacksonville University \u2014 signed the medical school nutrition education commitment<\/p>\n
Matthew Zuino, president and CEO of Baptist Health<\/p>\n
Kennedy said there was strong enthusiasm for the effort among the medical leaders at the meeting. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was gratifying to me to meet this pantheon of extraordinary medical leadership from medical schools, from the hospitals in the Jacksonville area,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we want to make America healthy, we\u2019ve got to start with nutrition.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the administration is also focusing on healthier food through the military, Head Start and Women, Infants and Children programs. Kennedy said the federal government is changing food subsidy programs and has encouraged Florida to seek a SNAP waiver to help recipients access healthier food.<\/p>\n
Bean said local community partners can help people learn about better food choices.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are learning that protein should be the basis of any diet because once you eat protein you get full and your continuing to consume some of the bad food. It\u2019s educating people on better choices; everybody has the power to do this themselves,\u201d Bean said.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORANGE PARK, Fla. \u2013 U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and U.S. Rep. Aaron…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5886,3487,116,118,117,3489,121018],"class_list":["post-434341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-aaron-bean","tag-clay-county","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-orange-park","tag-rfk-jr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}