NIH Conference
Dietary Supplement Use in Children:
Who, What, Why, and
Where Do We Go From Here?

February 12-13, 2001

Natcher Conference Center, Natcher Building
National Institutes of Health
9000 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, Maryland

Objective

The goal of this conference will be to identify key gaps in our knowledge about factors influencing the use, justification, and safety of dietary supplements in children and to establish a realistic research agenda to address these gaps. The products of this effort will be published proceedings and a well-defined research agenda that can be used for future program planning.

Meeting agenda and Highlights

Executive Summary

Key Topics

• Plenary Session I: Overview of Dietary Supplements
• Plenary Session II: Patterns of Use: Adequacy of Currently Available Data and Issues Related to the Determination of Patterns of Use
• Plenary Session III: Justification for use
• Plenary Session IV: Factors influencing the Decision to Use Dietary Supplements
• Plenary Session V: Safety
• Plenary Session VI: Research Issues to include

In addition to the plenary sessions, there will be five working group sessions intended to develop a research agenda focused on the following issues:

1. What are the essential components of a process to provide science-based justification for dietary supplement use in children?
2. What are the essential components of the safety analysis relative to dietary supplement use in children? What is the best process for ensuring safety of dietary supplements for children? Toxicology? Risk analysis? Safe upper limits? NAS/DRI model? What do we need to know about the physiological differences, e.g., developmental pharmacology, to ensure safe use of dietary supplements in children?
3. Methodologies: experimental design issues
   1. Epidemiology
   2. Biomarkers/outcomes for interventions and descriptive studies
4. How can we get input from and information to consumers about dietary supplement use in children?

Sponsors

The primary sponsors of this conference are the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements. Additional sponsorship is provided by other Institutes and Centers within the NIH, members of the federal research community, and members of the private stakeholder community.

Who Should Attend

The conference is intended to bring together interested members of the scientific, corporate and consumer communities to develop a coordinated research agenda designed to address the growing use of the full range of dietary supplements available to children from infancy through adolescence.

Contact Information

For more information about the conference--Dietary Supplement Use in Women: Current Status and Future Directions, please call:
Sadiqa Pettaway or Dan Raiten
301-435-7565