Challenges and opportunities for support of nutritional science conferences and scientific meetings at National Institutes of Health.

Opportunities exist throughout the institutes, centers, and offices of the NIH for obtaining support for conferences and scientific meetings. The number of conferences funded by NIH that thematically involve nutrition, health, and biomedical research is very small relative to the total number of conference grants awarded by NIH. Only 4% of conference grant (R13 and U13) applications awarded by all institutes and centers of the NIH over the last 5 y were determined to be focused on nutrition in some way. The National Cancer Institute has the largest proportion of these awards, and the numbers of such applications submitted each year appear to be increasing. Only approximately 18 nutrition research-related conference grant applications appear to have been funded, on average, per year over the last 5 y. Success rates are high; an average of 85% of nutrition-related applications submitted over the last 5 y were funded. The purpose of this article is to encourage applications from the nutrition community and to provide information for consideration when developing an application for a conference or workshop.