Through a recent set of funding opportunity announcements, the National Institutes of Health has issued a call for organizations to help launch its newest initiative, Nutrition for Precision Health, powered by the All of Us Research Program. The aim of the effort will be to generate insights that may lead to more tailored nutritional recommendations based on individual differences.
This is the first NIH-led study to leverage the All of Us participant cohort and infrastructure to expand data collection and drive new discoveries. The NIH Common Fund is supporting the study as a cross-cutting program expected to have a high impact on health research over the next decade.
“Just like health care, nutrition can’t be one-size-fits-all,” said All of Us’s Chief Executive Officer Josh Denny, M.D. “Better and more precise nutrition guidance has the potential to be a powerful ‘medication’ to better treat disease and improve health. This study has tremendous promise to help researchers learn more about people’s varied responses to different foods and dietary approaches, toward the larger goal of improving health and reducing chronic diseases.”
Nutrition for Precision Health reflects NIH’s growing momentum in nutrition research. These funding opportunities come on the heels of a recent announcement about the establishment of the Office of Nutrition Research within the NIH Office of the Director and the release of the first agency-wide strategic plan for nutrition research last spring.
For this initiative, NIH seeks organizations to provide leadership in diverse areas, including nutrition science, clinical research design and implementation, metabolomics, metagenomics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, bioethics, and more. For full details and eligibility criteria, please refer to the respective Nutrition for Precision Health funding opportunities:
- Artificial Intelligence for Multimodal Data Modeling and Bioinformatics Center (RFA-RM-21-001)
- Clinical Centers (RFA-RM-21-005)
- Dietary Assessment Center (RFA-RM-21-004)
- Metabolomics and Clinical Assays Center (RFA-RM-21-002)
- Microbiome and Metagenomics Center (RFA-RM-21-003)
- Research Coordinating Center (RFA-RM-21-006)
All applications are due by April 6, 2021, 5:00 p.m. local time, with letters of intent requested at least 30 days prior, by March 7, 2021.
NIH will hold a pre-application webinar for prospective applicants on February 11, at 11 a.m. EST, to provide more information and answer questions. Slides and Q&As from the webinar will also be posted online after the event. For more information and to register, please see our webinar announcement.
To learn more about Nutrition for Precision Health, visit https://commonfund.nih.gov/nutritionforprecisionhealth.
