NCCIH Research Blog

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) and the Office of Nutrition Research (ONR) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of the Director together with several other Institutes, Centers, and Offices at NIH have been planning an exciting virtual workshop on “Precision Probiotic Therapies—Challenges and Opportunities.” The planning committee, in consultation with senior leadership, has decided to postpone the workshop to achieve a final roster of speakers that reflects the diversity of research expertise in this field.

Since the start of the process, the planning team has been striving to create an agenda that reflects the best possible science and a diverse roster of speakers. Unfortunately, the draft agenda and list of confirmed speakers—posted online as positive responses were received—highlighted a stark gender imbalance and did not reflect what we had hoped to achieve. We have heard the voices from the field—both men and women—who shared their concerns about the imbalance in the speaker lineup. Therefore, we have decided to postpone the meeting to give us more time to review our process, the agenda, and speakers. We endeavor to do better.

We invite you to stay tuned if you’re a scientist in the fields of probiotics, live biotherapeutic products, and gut microbiome; a researcher in another field but with interests in the topic; a health care provider; or an interested member of the public. Those who are currently registered will receive a message to register once the new date is selected. We will promote the new dates of the meeting widely through NCCIH Update and other NIH channels.

This workshop will be a dynamic event that shares the state-of-the-science in precision probiotic therapies, AND it will better reflect the NIH commitment to workforce diversity in the biomedical sciences.