The Nutrition Assessment Shared Resource (NASR) was formed in July 1993, to consolidate existing dietary assessment activities and provide comprehensive support to FHCRC studies involving dietary intervention and assessment. The shared resource provides services for the analysis of 24- hour recalls, multiple day food records, and Food Frequency Questionnaires (FFQs). The resource provides interviewer and coder training, quality control oversight, and nutritional database management. NASR is one of the largest users in the United States of the Minnesota Nutrition Data Systems (NDS) software for data entry and nutrient analysis of dietary intake. NASR currently supports 18 peer-reviewed NIH studies, one study funded from research foundations, and one funded by industry. These studies are in Public Health Sciences (four in Weiss-Daling Studies, six in the Program of Epidemiology, seven in Cancer Prevention Research Program, one in the Southwest Oncology Group, two in the Program in Cancer Biology, and the observational and intervention arms of the Women's Health Initiative) and an interdisciplinary project involving the Division of Molecular Medicine, the Clinical Division, and the Division of Public Health Sciences. Initial development of the shared resource was supported by a combination of user fees and institutional funds. Developmental tasks included: (1) standardized procedures to provide consistent, comprehensive, and high-quality dietary assessment services; (2) a complex data tracking system providing NASR with integrated data management and billing capabilities; (3) modification of the data entry software to handle new methods of measuring and recording diets (e.g. to support currently funded and proposed feeding studies); and (4) extensive work on enhancing the NDS software to develop a sophisticated system for food grouping to analyze servings of specific food types, dietary patterns, food sources of nutrients, and other non-nutrient dietary measures from food-record and diet-recall data.
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