The Nutrition Academic Award (NAA) is a national award emanating from the National Institutes of Health in response to national, public and congressional mandates to enhance nutrition education of health care providers, in particular medical students. The hopes of the NAA are to expand this goal to include resident physicians, research fellows and practicing physicians, physician assistants, and nurses.

In September of 1998, ten awards were provided to medical schools around the country. An additional seven awardees were notified in April 2000, each award being honored for a span of five years. The awardees and their Principle Investigators can be found at the national NAA website. The NAA awardees vary considerably in their scope of medical nutrition activities. They encompass research-intensive institutions with mature curricula such as the University of Washington (UW) to institutions with radically restructured modern medical-nutrition curricula like the University of Rochester (UR). At UR, nutrition is used as a teaching theme for a number of medical disciplines including public health and statistics. Mercer University in Georgia and the University of Arkansas are other examples of awardees that are teaching-intensive in their themes. Several committees have been formed in an effort to carry out NAA goals and functions.

Links to Other Medical School Nutrition Sites

About NAA Goals and Functions