Research Priorities

The Academy is committed to improving the nation’s health and advancing the profession of nutrition and dietetics. Beginning in 2018, the Academy embarked on an interactive process to assess emergent research needs and identify research priorities that, if addressed, would have the greatest impact on knowledge advancement and empowerment of nutrition and dietetics practitioners, students, interns and retired members. The 2020-25 Academy research priorities fall within four themes: nutrition-related discovery, clinical nutrition research, implementation science and public health.

Progress within and across each of these themes will have a significant impact on human health and provides a tremendous opportunity to advance the field of nutrition and dietetics.

Nutrition-Related Discovery

• Increase the understanding of absorption, digestion, metabolism and excretion processes in states of health and disease.
• Advance our understanding of prenatal and neonatal nutrition factors, including parental health behaviors, impacting fetal development and childhood health.
• Explore the role of the microbiome and of microbiome-supporting diets on health and disease prevention across the lifespan.

Implementation Science

• Validate the clinical characteristics of malnutrition in all its forms across adult, child and neonatal populations.
• Clarify nutrient needs associated with optimal outcomes in special populations.
• Assess the efficacy of and applications for integrative and functional medicine approaches to health promotion and disease management.

Clinical Nutrition Research

• Evaluate the costs and impact of improving and expanding delivery of medical nutrition therapy (MNT) and other nutrition and dietetics services across various medical conditions and identify opportunities that exist for improved MNT delivery.
• Explore the role of the nutrition and dietetics practitioners in the utility and application of emerging technologies, information management and knowledge management processes to inform and advance nutrition and dietetics programming and practice.
• Evaluate best practices for translating, disseminating and scaling nutrition and dietetics interventions across community and clinical settings.
• Advance our understanding of effective strategies for maintaining nutrition-related behavior changes in diverse populations.

Public Health

• Assess the multi-directional relationship between food systems – including various food production, processing and distribution practices – and nutrition and health outcomes.
• Evaluate strategies to address current diet and health disparities and related chronic disease disparities among low-income and underrepresented persons.
• Examine the impact of programs and policies that target social determinants of health on nutrition and nutrition-related health outcomes.

Effective August 18th, 2023, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics will not permit more than 15% of a total contract budget to be used for facility and administrative (F&A/indirect) costs. This pertains to all contracts regardless of organizational type. Please contact Paul Mifsud, Chief Financial Officer, for any questions regarding this policy.