An official website of the United States government
Food Is Medicine
When beginning your next investigator-initiated application, consider the following NIH highlighted topic. The area of science described below is of interest to the listed NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices (ICOs). This is not a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO).
Apply through an appropriate NIH Parent Funding Announcement or another broad NIH opportunity available on Grants.gov. Learn how to interpret and use Highlighted Topics.
Topic Description
Post Date: June 3, 2026
Expiration Date: June 3, 2028
Food is Medicine (FIM) approaches are expanding across the U.S. and show promise in positively impacting diet quality and food security, but their impact on clinical and health outcomes remains limited, due to inconsistent results or a lack significant magnitude. Robust studies are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of FIM approaches.
Purpose
The purpose of this topic is to encourage innovative multidisciplinary, multidomain research to advance FIM programs to prevent and address diet-related chronic diseases (DRCD) and associated health disparities across the lifespan, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, some cancers, and mental health disorders. We seek innovative research ideas that advance the knowledge base of FIM interventions through high-quality rigorous research focused on the measurement of clinical and health outcomes within well-designed programs.
High priority research topics include but are not limited to:
- Clinical trials examining FIM approaches with other multi-domain interventions (clinical services, food environment) to improve diet-quality and address DRCD in all populations, including those with disabilities
- Behavioral, pragmatic, and implementation trials focused on the efficacy of FIM-based health care economics, services, and approaches to prevent chronic diseases
- Study designs that include innovative multicomponent and multilevel interventions
- Studies that aim to develop and validate biomarkers of physiological responses to dietary intake and relationship to disease risk within the context of FIM programs
- Studies that assess the economic impact, return on investment, cost, and cost-effectiveness of different FIM interventions and programs
- Studies examining the role of FIM services in facilitating food access, diet-related malnutrition, and certain chronic conditions
- Studies that identify and validate evaluation metrics that can effectively measure the effects of FIM interventions on different health outcomes and conditions
- Studies using FIM programs to improve quality of life, behavioral and mental health, and community resilience supported by data on intervention effectiveness beyond clinical endpoints, including measures of quality of life and behavioral or mental health outcomes
- Training programs and fellowships for health care professionals that expand evidence-based culinary medicine and teaching kitchen programs
- Assessments to identify high risk populations and interventions to provide FIM services, including medically tailored meals or groceries, nutritious food recommendations, and produce prescriptions
- Studies assessing interactions between the physical environment and food systems in the context of FIM interventions
- Studies that partner, engage, and communicate with communities to improve health and prevent/reduce diet-related diseases
- Secondary analyses that leverage existing datasets and databases to evaluate the impact of FIM interventions on health outcomes and health care utilization costs
It aligns with:
- NIH MAHA Chronic Disease Initiative : The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will launch an Initiative on Chronic Disease to leverage and align existing NIH research projects, improve NIH coordination on chronic disease research, and generate actionable results for diseases arising in childhood and adulthood.
- NIH MAHA Chronic Disease Initiative : The NIH will launch a new Whole-Person-Health approach to chronic disease prevention research and leverage collective expertise across the agency to catalyze transformative discovery science and intervention strategies that promote wellness, resilience, and optimal health, including metabolic health, at all stages of life.
- Real World Data Platform (RWDP) : The NIH will link multiple datasets, such as claims information, electronic health records, and wearables data, into a single integrated dataset for researchers studying the causes of, and developing treatments for, the chronic disease crisis. The RWDP will eliminate redundancies from data collection, linkage, and compute infrastructures (including artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning and high-throughput analytics) while maintaining rigorous privacy protections and consent protections. It will also dramatically reduce administrative overhead by relying on a unified set of data use and governance agreements.
- Food for Health : HHS, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and USDA will study the impact of programs that implement food and lifestyle interventions to improve health outcomes and decrease costs. The NIH Office of Nutrition will coordinate research initiatives to improve rigorous studies and maximize impact, including through large-scale randomized control trials.
- Nutrition : NIH will partner with FDA, USDA, and the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA) to conduct high-quality nutrition research and ingredient assessments. As part of this effort, NIH will expand research on dietary patterns that support metabolic health. NIH and HHS will take steps to fully utilize the newly created FDA and NIH Joint Nutrition Regulatory Science Program. USDA will prioritize precision nutrition research, which identifies how dietary exposures impact individuals, leading to more targeted nutritional recommendations. HHS will add questions to the National Survey of Children’s Health that focus on nutrition.
- Rural and Tribal Health : NIH will convene a review of its research on health improvement in rural and tribal health for chronic childhood disease to ensure scientific rigor.
Participating ICOs
ONR is interested in advancing innovative research on Food is Medicine to address the critical role of nutrition in health across the lifespan for all. Specific to this topic, ONR is interested in research that:
- Improves the precision (measurement, interpretation, and attribution) of assessment of nutritional status as a biological variable.
- Explores the reciprocal relationships among nutritional status and the processes necessary to achieve that status (i.e., digestion, absorption, metabolism, integration into relevant biological systems, homeostatic control).
Nicholas Jury, Ph.D.
[email protected]
NCCIH is interested in supporting research that explores the clinical and mechanistic effects of natural products derived from the healthy foods (e.g., fruits, vegetables, fermented foods, traditional culinary practices) in the context of whole person health and health restoration. Studies focused on macronutrients are low priority.
Topics include but are not limited to:
- Secondary metabolites from food that modulate multiple biological systems, often in conjunction with gut microbiome.
- Health benefits associated with a diet high in fruits and vegetables attributed, in part, to certain non-nutritive phytochemicals (e.g. polyphenols or terpenes).
- Natural products that exert observable effects only in combination with certain other dietary constituents or environmental exposures.
Patrick Still
[email protected]
Hye-Sook Kim
[email protected]
NCI supports Food is Medicine (FIM) research to improve diet quality, prevent and intercept cancer, and reduce adverse treatment-related outcomes and comorbidities in high-risk individuals and survivors. Studies are recommended that strengthen scientific rigor, reproducibility and measurement error, including that:
- Develop precision nutrition interventions to modulate metabolism and immunity, and validate intermediate biomarkers related to cancer risk, prevention, and survivorship
- Assess the efficacy and effectiveness of FIM interventions on behavioral and clinical outcomes (e.g., malnutrition, sarcopenia) to mitigate cancer treatment-related toxicities
- Examine barriers, facilitators, and cost-effectiveness of FIM interventions to inform dissemination, and implementation across the cancer care continuum
- Develop multilevel FIM interventions at the community and healthcare organization levels that address food and nutrition security, and obesity to reduce cancer risk and progression
Gabriela Riscuta, M.D., M.S.
[email protected]
Tanya Agurs-Collins, Ph.D.
[email protected]
NHLBI is interested in FIM research that includes studies and trials that:
- Test clinical effectiveness of FIM interventions to improve outcomes and manage diseases, such as hypertension, heart failure, sickle cell, iron deficiency anemia, sleep disorders, asthma, and other respiratory diseases
- Conduct comparative effectiveness studies to improve health and resilience
- Assess feasibility, acceptability, cost effectiveness and sustainability of FIM interventions using multiple strategies to assess outcomes
- Trials on meal timing, dietary composition, and circadian alignment for sleep outcomes and cardiometabolic risk
- Evaluate FIM impact on chronic respiratory diseases, sleep, circadian rhythms, and patient-reported outcomes
- Develop implementation strategies for integration, scaling, and sustainability in healthcare/community settings
NHLBI Highlighted Topics
[email protected]
NIAMS is interested in supporting research to better understand how FIM programs can address DRCD within the NIAMS mission, including:
- Translational and/or clinical studies on the role of food in preventing or managing rheumatic, musculoskeletal, and skin diseases and conditions.
- Clinical, behavioral, and implementation studies that integrate FIM interventions with clinical care to improve physical function, pain, mobility, self-efficacy, and quality of life in individuals with rheumatic, musculoskeletal, and skin conditions.
- Mechanistic and biomarker-driven approaches into the relationship between food, the gut microbiome, and NIAMS mission related topics like immune system activity, bone metabolism, or inflammatory skin conditions.
Jana Eisenstein, M.S.
[email protected]
NIDCR is interested in multidisciplinary research related to dental, oral, and craniofacial health changes in relation to FIM programs, nutrition knowledge and access, oral health care prevention and treatment including but not limited to:
- Incorporation of FIM programs in treatment strategies for oral conditions that impact the ability to maintain a healthy diet.
- Dental care providers’ contribution to the public health effort of advancing healthy food access, nutritional assessment, counseling, and referral.
- Evaluation of community-based FIM interventions to identify key implementation strategies and biological and socio-behavioral mechanisms for optimizing chronic oral conditions such as caries and periodontal disease, overall health (e.g. HIV, diabetes, perinatal health), and economic outcomes.
- Studies partnering with communities to promote/incorporate FIM as a preventative strategy against early childhood dental caries development.
Margaret Grisius, DDS
[email protected]
Hiroko Iida, DDS
[email protected]
Tamara McNealy, PhD
[email protected]
NIMH is interested in research with a focus on well-characterized psychiatric populations or risk states and use rigorous study designs to test hypothesized mechanisms linking Food is Medicine (FIM) interventions to defined symptom domains. Studies should advance understanding of prevention or treatment of psychopathology.
Areas of interest include:
- Mechanistic and early-phase clinical trials examining FIM interventions as probes of biological or behavioral processes underlying mental health symptoms.
- Augmentation of FIM clinical trials with repeated psychiatric and mechanistic assessments.
- Secondary analyses evaluating mechanistic links between dietary components and mental health outcomes.
Heather Rusch
[email protected]
NIMHD supports research using Food is Medicine (FIM) interventions to improve diet quality, food access, and the economic problem of chronic diseases among NIH-designated populations experiencing health disparities. Projects must examine objective, measurable biobehavioral and/or clinical outcomes in humans leading to solutions. Areas of interest include (but are not limited to):
- Projects testing the effectiveness of FIM programs (e.g., medically tailored meals, produce prescriptions).
- Preventive and patient-centered research that considers biological, environmental, and social drivers of health among FIM recipients to address nutrition-related disparities.
- Research on adapting, scaling, and sustaining FIM programs across healthcare and community settings that serve populations with a higher prevalence of diet-related chronic diseases and limited access to healthy foods.
Division of Integrative Biological and Behavioral Research
[email protected]
NINR is interested in research addressing conditions of daily life that influence health and informed by and developed with communities.
Some specific areas of interest include:
- Multilevel interventions including community, organizational, or health system levels, including digital technology and AI use to enhance reach, delivery, and effectiveness.
- Interventions addressing conditions of daily life (e.g., food insecurity, access to produce), especially in populations disproportionately affected by diet-related chronic disease.
- Community-engaged interventions targeting social, economic, physical, and food environments to reduce gaps in diet-related chronic disease outcomes.
- Pragmatic, implementation-focused studies examining integration, scalability, and sustainability of FIM interventions within clinical and community-based systems of care.
Maureen K. Akubu-Odero, DrPH MPH MBA MSc
[email protected]
OAR is interested in multidisciplinary science to evaluate the effectiveness of Food is Medicine (FIM) interventions on improving the quality of life of people with or impacted by HIV. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, research to promote food security within these communities and better understand the relationship between the microbiome and HIV-related health outcomes.
Geetanjali Bansal, PhD
[email protected]
OBSSR is interested in behavioral and social science aspects of encouraging innovative multidisciplinary, multidomain research to advance FIM programs to prevent and address diet-related chronic diseases (DRCD) and associated health disparities across the lifespan.
OBSSR Scientific Contact
[email protected]
For this topic, ODP is interested in interventions, including multilevel and multicomponent, that improve diet quality, reduce disease risk, and prevent diet-related chronic diseases, particularly among high-risk populations. ODP is also interested in interventions that evaluate FIM approaches that focus on primary prevention (e.g., produce prescriptions and other incentives) and secondary prevention (e.g., Medically Tailored Meals).
Bramaramba Kowtha MS, RDN, LDN
[email protected]
The Office of Autoimmune Disease Research in the Office of Research on Women’s Health (OADR-ORWH) is interested in supporting research to better understand how dietary interventions may influence autoimmune disease onset, progression, flares, and symptom management across the lifespan, including:
- Interventional studies that test specific dietary patterns and therapeutic diets in autoimmune disease populations.
- Mechanistic and biomarker-driven approaches that link diet, the gut microbiome, and immune system activity.
- Approaches that integrate patient-reported outcomes, digital health tools, and predictive modeling to improve disease management and enhance the quality of life for people living with autoimmune diseases.
Community engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration, including the involvement of people living with autoimmune diseases, caregivers, and clinicians, is strongly encouraged to ensure research has direct relevance to human health.
Victoria Shanmugam, MBBS, FRCP, FACR, CCD
[email protected]
For technical issues E-mail OER Webmaster