Small Office; Big Footprint
Readers of my past blogs know that I view nutrition as an ecosystem and as both an input and outcome of health and disease. The nutritional ecosystem is also interconnected with climate and the environment, planetary and public health, the economy, national security, and highly intricate food systems. Such breadth recognizes and embraces the complexity and multidisciplinarity of nutrition science and implores us to make and leverage intentional, nontraditional connections. Through these touchpoints, we surface new research questions.
Our office, the NIH Office of Nutrition Research (ONR), is making this happen with eyes and ears to the ground, creating and sustaining critical connections to enable new research. We are here to provide service and technical support to all NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices as well as the entire nutrition community. This blog post highlights some of the work of my incredible ONR team: an office of only nine people with a big footprint across NIH, the federal government, and even globally.
Within NIH, ONR identifies emerging scientific opportunities, rising public health challenges, and scientific gaps in the field of nutrition. We are both planners and coordinators, situated within the NIH Office of the Director to facilitate the cross-cutting and trans-NIH nature of nutrition science. Given the foundational role of nutrition in biology and health, every NIH Institute and Center has a stake in nutrition, as is evident in the 2020-2030 Strategic Plan for NIH Nutrition Research. We take seriously our charge to maximize the return on investment from public dollars that fund nutrition research across NIH: harnessing emerging technology with a whole-person lens.
As I have previously written about, a very exciting current research project is the Common Fund’s Nutrition for Precision Health, powered by the All of Us Research Program (NPH), which is still enrolling research participants. Launched in 2023, the NPH study is a landmark initiative built on recent advances in biomedical science. It leverages the large, diverse participant group of the All of Us Research Program and aims to develop algorithms that predict individual responses to food and dietary patterns. How cool is that?!
ONR is also leading research to better understand and mitigate food insecurity. Further, in line with our efforts to help implement the National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, ONR staff are working across NIH and the whole government on Food is Medicine activities, the goals of which are to more fully integrate nutrition, health, and community.
For this work and many, many other nutrition-related efforts, ONR interacts frequently with many of our partnering federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. As just one example: for more than 40 years, NIH has had a seat at the table as part of the Interagency Committee on Human Nutrition Research. This group has a broad mandate that includes planning, coordination, and communication among federal agencies engaged in nutrition research as well as developing plans for federal research programs to meet current and future domestic and international needs for nutrition. ONR is also involved in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans process, produces reports to Congress on nutrition-related activities, and is part of the Interagency Policy Council on Nutrition, convened by the White House Domestic Policy Council to address a wide range of topics that affect nutrition.
Readers of my blogs and papers also know that I am strongly committed to understanding and addressing the reciprocal relationship between climate and environmental changes and food systems and its impact on nutrition and health. As such, ONR participates in the NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative and the U.S. Global Change Research Program, both cross-cutting efforts to reduce health threats from climate change across the lifespan. We also lead the ADVANTAGE Project (an acronym for “Agriculture and Diet: Value Added for Nutrition, Translation, and Adaptation in a Global Ecology”), the Global Nutrition Coordination Plan’s CHANGE working group (an acronym for “Climate, Health, Agriculture, and Nutrition in a Global Ecology”), and the American Society for Nutrition’s CHAIN working group (an acronym for “Climate/Environmental Change, Health, Agriculture, and Improving Nutrition”).
Yep – government loves its acronyms! But seriously, ONR’s efforts near and far are instrumental to guiding a new and transformative era of science recognizing the conceptual framework of a nutritional ecology, which is raising awareness to many research opportunities and areas that extend far beyond food. I am honored and privileged to be a part of this team and movement. Indeed, the ONR crew is small and mighty – and we do not shy away from complexity but rather embrace it toward improving human health in all its dimensions.
Nutrition is central to humans’ interdependent relationship with Earth. Nutrition matters to everyone, and we are all in this together. We at ONR will continue to work with partners across all sectors and disciplines to support actionable research that will inform solutions – such that nutrition research is viewed holistically as a fundamental driver of individual, community, societal, and planetary health. It needs to be done, and now. We are poised and ready!
As always, I welcome comments, feedback, and suggested new directions any time (check out the “Request a Session” button for NutRitioNaLS – NIH Research on Nutrition Listening Sessions, located on the ONR website). Until then, thanks for reading, and please subscribe to receive ONR email updates.
Nutrition Is Who We Are!
Drew Bremer
July 16, 2024