(P26-004-23) A Resilience Research Conceptual Model and Design Tool as an Approach to Investigating Beneficial Health Outcomes of Nutritional Interventions

Objectives: The Resilience Research Working Group at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) embarked on a project to harmonize the definition of resilience, develop a conceptual framework to characterize resilience broadly across multiple domains, and show the application of a Resilience Research Design Tool to improve consistency on the design and/or reporting of resilience research studies.

Methods: We explored commonalities amongst various frameworks representing the science of resilience across NIH and the scientific literature. We also considered various systems, stressors, outcome measures and metrics, and interventions and/or protective factors that were representative of resilience research studies across multiple domains.

Results: As a result of our efforts, at NIH, we defined resilience as a system’s capacity to recover, grown, adapt, or resist perturbation from a challenge or stressor. The working group members also propose that over time, a system’s response to a challenge might show varied degrees of reactions that likely fluctuate in response to the severity of the challenge, the length of time exposed to the challenge, and/or innate biological factors.

Conclusions: Harmonization of resilience research studies can help advance the science towards the development of more empirical evidence of resilience outcomes. This work has the potential to offer new methods for investigating benefits of nutritional interventions. Studies funded by the NIH Consortium for Advancing Research on Botanical and Other Natural Products (CARBON) program provide examples of resilience research methods on nutritional interventions that include omega-3-fatty acids, caffeoylquinic acids, polyphenols, and resveratrol; as well as relevant research topics that include aging, stress induced models of depression and psychological impairment, perinatal stroke, sleep deprivation, and acute bacterial infection. The applicability of the resilience research concept model and design tool can be shown to extend to other interventions and domains including nutrient dietary supplements, behavioral interventions, and discovery of protective factors.

Funding Sources: N/A