Vision
To promote active healthy aging through good nutrition.

Mission
To increase food and nutrition services in home and community-based social, health, and long-term care systems serving older adults.

The Center promotes active healthy aging by working to reduce nutrition risk among older adults, especially minorities with health disparities. The goals are to support quality of life, improve functionality, promote independence, and decrease early nursing home admissions and hospitalizations, through better nutrition.

The Center, with funding primarily from the US Administration on Aging, assists Older Americans Act Nutrition Programs that includes 4000+ Title III local providers, 655 area agencies on aging, 57 state units on aging, and 233 tribes and tribal organizations of American Indians and Alaskan Natives and 2 organizations of Native Hawaiians under Title VI, and other organizations. Older Americans Nutrition Programs serve about 250 million congregate and in-home meals to about 2.6 million older adults annually.

The Center encourages risk-based nutrition screening to identify and serve the most needy, provides technical training, disseminates timely information, and conducts policy analysis and outcomes research. The Center's applied, community-based research has fostered vital links among faculty researchers, local nutrition service providers, older adults, and caregivers.

Center Activities

Center Audiences

The Center responds to requests from:

The National Policy and Resource Center on Nutrition and Aging at Florida International University is located in the School of Health, College of Health and Urban Affairs. The Department of Dietetics and Nutrition offers BS, MS, and PhD degrees, two dietetic internship programs, and a graduate certificate in gerontology and nutrition.

Established in 1972, Florida International University is one of America's most dynamic institutions of higher learning. With a nationally renowned faculty and students from across the US and more than 130 foreign countries, the University offers more than 190 baccalaureate, master's and doctoral degree programs in 19 colleges and schools. FIU is the country's largest grantor of BS degrees to Hispanics. FIU ranks among America's top 100 public national universities (U.S. News & World Report) and as a top 20 value in public higher education (Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine). FIU emphasizes research as a major component of its mission and is ranked by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a Doctoral/Research University--Extensive. Sponsored research funding from external sources was more than $64 million in 2001-02. FIU has more than 34,000 students, 1,000 full-time faculty, and 95,000 alumni, making it the largest university in South Florida and placing it among the nation's 30 largest colleges and universities.