Services for a range of nutritional and metabolic problems
The Frances Stern Nutrition Center (FSNC) provides outpatient and inpatient nutrition services at Tufts Medical Center. Services offered to ambulatory patients include individual counseling and personalized dietary planning. Services provided to patients during their hospital stay include nutritional assessment, food and nutrition care, counseling and nutritional support when necessary.
Nutrition is an essential component of wellness, disease risk reduction and treatment. FSNC dietitians are guided by the belief that eating should be enjoyable for all - those with and without special dietary needs.
Outpatient services
Ambulatory patients visit FSNC’s outpatient dietitians for a host of reasons – from help with general healthy eating to more complex medical conditions requiring highly specialized medical nutrition therapy. Our dietitians work one-on-one with patients to tailor a plan to their individual nutrition needs. They provide advice about optimal eating patterns and the maintenance of healthy lifestyle, both at home and away.
Nutrition topics include:
- Healthy eating and wellness
- Weight management
- Diabetes self-management (prediabetes, Type 1, Type 2, and gestational diabetes)
- Heart healthy eating
- Nutrition considerations in gastrointestinal diseases (celiac disease, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease, gastroesophogeal reflux, and other issues)
- Nutrition considerations in kidney disease (chronic kidney disease, kidney stones, and other issues)
- Eating well with cancer
- Thriving with food allergies and intolerances
- Wholesome eating during pregnancy and lactation
- Healthy eating for children
- Therapeutic diets for children with special needs
- And much more...
Inpatient services
FSNC’s inpatient dietitians provide nutritional assessment, food and nutrition care, and counseling for patients during their hospital stay. Through FSNC’s affiliation with Tufts Medical Center’s Nutrition Support Service, our dietitians also work with medical and nursing staff to offer special enteral and parenteral nutrition support by oral nutritional supplements, tube feeding, or intravenous feeding in the acute and critical care settings. We provide services to all hospitalized patients in areas including:
- Kidney, heart, and bone marrow transplants
- Critically ill patients with complex medical and surgical problems
- Adult and pediatric trauma
- Gastrointestinal surgery and malabsorption
- General surgical conditions
- Cancers and other blood diseases, including cancer of the head and neck
- Heart and kidney disease
- Neurological impairment
- Pediatrics and term and preterm newborn care
- Obstetrics and gynecology, including hyperemesis gravidarum and gestational diabetes
- Long term acute care and rehabilitation
In addition to inpatient and outpatient services, the Frances Stern Nutrition Center is officially accredited by the Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics (ACEND) as the site of the combined Dietetic Internship/Master’s Degree program. This program provides a combination of a Master’s degree from the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy with a dietetic internship at Tufts Medical Center as the certified site for supervised clinical training. Upon completion, students are eligible to sit for the Registered Dietitian (RD) examination to earn the RD credential. For additional information, please refer to the Tufts University Friedman School website. Graduates are distinguished in many clinical and community nutrition positions, as well as in higher education. A number of the graduates of the program have received doctoral or other higher degrees.
The Frances Stern Nutrition Center was established in 1918, is one of the oldest nutrition clinics in the world, and it continues to serve as a model for many other nutrition clinics in the United States and abroad. The clinic is named for Frances Stern, a community and clinical nutritionist in Boston in the early 20th century who helped to revolutionize nutrition education by developing individualized, culturally sensitive approaches to counseling patients that involved experiential learning using visual aids, food models, and ethnic recipes in her instruction. Later innovations included training dietitians in oral health.
The Center has hosted nutrition scientists and dietitians on sabbaticals and for visits from clinical dietitians from countries such as Israel, Taiwan, Singapore, and Korea. Interactions with these clinical nutrition professionals enrich the exposure of staff and students to the best national and international dietetics programs. In the past several decades, the Center has participated in several large national clinical trials of various dietary treatments, conducted other clinical nutrition research, and members of the Center have published several books and several hundred articles in peer-reviewed journals.
Clinic hours: Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
**Patients are advised to bring a referral from a health care practitioner in order to make an appointment so that all the relevant medical information can be made available, and to ensure that if your insurance covers the visit it can be billed appropriately.**
Frances Stern Nutrition Center Clinic
Box 783 Tufts Medical Center
800 Washington Street, Boston, MA 02111
Phone: (617) 636-5273 (outpatient services) or (617) 636 5275 (administrative offices)
