Developing research programs in clinical and translational nutrition.

Most clinicians believe that nutrition support therapy improves outcome in hospitalized patients. Unfortunately, few patients receive optimal nutrition management. A lack of strong, well-designed research studies may prevent the medical/surgical community from fully embracing the practice. More quality research is needed. This article discusses 3 potential strategies to improve research activity in clinical nutrition: increase funding of nutrition research, foster young physician training in nutrition and research, and attract nutrition researchers to our national nutrition society meetings. The best chance for this process to succeed is for the national nutrition societies to partner with medical and surgical subspecialty societies to develop larger scale clinical and translational research programs.