November 2025 Directors’ Message
The connection between nutrition and health has never been more central to the national dialogue. Nutrition is known to drive public health, individual health and wellbeing, health care costs, and the US economy – food directly and indirectly impacts virtually all aspects of society.
ICON-Health was founded on the belief that meaningful progress in developing solutions that directly address the chronic disease crisis, and advancing new fundamental and applied knowledge, requires the collaborative energy of diverse disciplines working together integrating nutrition from all lenses. This team-based approach allows us to address complex health challenges with the depth, rigor and impact that they demand.
Although just launched last month, ICON-Health has more than 50 affiliated scientists and trainees, please see their research areas and links here https://icon.fsu.edu/members.
FSU has made nutrition a central focus across the entire university. Recent advances across the institute highlight how integrative research can translate discovery into action. Our investigators are developing new biomarkers of nutritional health, understanding how nutrition affects maternal-child health outcomes, how nutrition interacts with our genome, examining the role of diet in chronic disease prevention, and shaping strategies that inform public policies and public health recommendations. By combining FSU’s strengths in basic and applied sciences, ICON-Health is helping to establish the university as a leader in nutrition research and education globally. In the coming year, we aim to expand our collaborations both within and beyond campus.
We encourage you to engage with this initiative and help shape the future of the institute. Over the coming weeks, we will be rolling out planned activities, many drawn from member and leadership suggestions.
Dr. Regan Bailey
Director, Institute for Connecting Nutrition and Health (ICON-Health)
Professor, Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine, College of Medicine
Dr. Patrick Stover
Director, Institute for Connecting Nutrition and Health (ICON-Health)
Professor, Biomedical Sciences, College of Medicine