Clinical and Translational Nutrition
Cellular and Physiological Nutrition/Metabolism
.jpg "Paul Coates, PhD photo")
Paul Coates, PhD
Vice President Elect, Board of Directors
American Society for Nutrition
Silver Spring, Maryland, United States
Sarah Ohlhorst, MS, RD
Chief Science Policy Officer
American Society for Nutrition
Rockville, Maryland, United States
.jpg "Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH photo")
Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH
Dean
Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Sheila Fleischhacker, PhD, JD, RDN
Adjunct Professor of Law
Georgetown University Law Center
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Sylvia Rowe
President
SR Strategy, Chair of the NASEM’s Food and Nutrition Board Food Forum
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Dan Glickman, Former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture
Executive Director of the Aspen Institute Congressional Program
The Aspen Institute
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Catherine Woteki, PhD
Professor, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition
Iowa State University
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
David Kessler, JD, MD
Director and Board Chair, Center for Science in the Public Interest;
Former Commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
William Li, M.D.
CEO
The Angiogenesis Foundation
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Former Senator Tom Harkin
Former Senator, Iowa
Van Hubbard, MD, PhD
Rear Admiral (Ret), US Public Health Service
Former Director, NIH Division of Nutrition Research Coordination
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
Bethesda, Maryland, United States
.jpg "Patrick Stover, PhD photo")
Patrick Stover, PhD
Vice Chancellor and Dean of Agriculture and Life Science
Texas A&M
College Station, Texas, United States
The US faces a national nutrition crisis. Changes in Americans’ diets have spawned major rises in diet-related chronic diseases, contributed to skyrocketing healthcare costs, widened diet-related health disparities, and weakened military readiness, with additional unparalleled challenges to our natural resources and food systems.
These chronic strains have been further laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic. The outbreak has highlighted many national food and nutrition challenges, including related to hunger and food insecurity, major diet-related comorbidities for hospitalization and death, insufficient surveillance and coordination of supply chains, and inadequate science to make robust nutritional recommendations for resilient population immune responses.
This session will present and discuss new work and findings on how improved coordination and investment in federal nutrition research is crucial to improve public health, health equity, healthcare spending, military readiness, and resilience for future crises. The session aims to provide an objective, informative summary for diverse stakeholders on nutrition research-related health and economic burdens, current landscape, opportunities, and options for strengthening national nutrition research.
Building on a new comprehensive white paper on strengthening federal nutrition research supported through a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, two panels with a diversity of experts will outline the current state, challenges, and opportunities for strengthening federal nutrition research. This includes approaches for new cross-governmental coordination of nutrition research across the more than 10 federal departments and agencies that currently conduct or rely on federally supported human nutrition research and for increasing nutrition research investment and structure at the National Institutes of Health. We aim for the session to include a keynote from a federal lawmaker on potential to address some of these problems and policy solutions. Finally, the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) will share its contributions to exploring these options for strengthening federal nutrition research and conclude with action steps ASN members can take to advance and strengthen federal nutrition research.