Message from Norman Rosenblum, INMD Scientific Director
October 2022

The INMD Strategic Plan, 2021-2026, states that our vision is to ‘catalyze world-leading research that promotes optimal and equitable nutrition and metabolic health outcomes for Canadians’. To achieve this expansive vision, INMD committed to work with stakeholders, including decision-makers and other knowledge users, to make critical investments and catalyze activities that will lead to a better understanding of the basis of human health and disease. One of INMD’s strategic priorities to achieve this vision is to Harness Discovery and Diversity to generate precision prevention, diagnosis and treatment strategies in nutrition and metabolic health.

The INMD Institute Advisory Board (IAB) has spent a considerable amount of time envisioning how to implement this strategic plan and address the strategic priorities. To inform our efforts, INMD hosted a virtual Workshop on October 13 and 14th, that was focused on Heterogeneity in Nutrition and Metabolic Health.  The purpose of this Workshop was to define the scientific opportunities, research gaps and priorities that could be addressed through a strategic research initiative on Heterogeneity in Nutrition and Metabolic Health.

Four theme areas were explored during the workshop:

  • Interactions between structural, environmental, and biological factors in Indigenous Communities that underlie heterogeneity in nutrition and metabolic health
  • Precision nutrition approaches to understand heterogeneity and intervene effectively
  • Understanding heterogeneity using multiple forms of data and tools
  • Heterogeneity in terms of disease susceptibility, progression, resilience, reversibility, and treatment strategy

I am grateful to members of the INMD IAB who participated in the Planning Committee that developed these themes and the Program for this Workshop. I am also grateful to all the speakers who joined us from Canada as well as from many different countries and time zones!  Finally, many thanks to the Workshop participants for their contributions to the breakout group discussions.

We will be posting a summary of this Workshop on the INMD website, and I encourage you to stay tuned as we further develop these themes.

All the best,

Norman Rosenblum, MD, FRCPC, FCAHS
Scientific Director
Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes

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