Nutrition Obesity Research Center

The UNC Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC) is one of only twelve centers in the country funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) that is specifically designed to support nutritional sciences and obesity research.

The NORC, housed in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and the School of Medicine, works to combine basic nutrition research, human clinical trials, community based interventions and population studies, in an effort to answer questions about how the foods we eat affect our bodies.

The services offered by the Nutrition Obesity Research Center make it possible for investigators, both inside and outside of the discipline of nutrition, to apply cutting-edge  methods in their research. This multi-disciplinary approach helps to advance our understanding of obesity, heart disease, cancer and other major societal health problems that are impacted by human nutrition.

The goals of the UNC NORC are to:

• Support and enhance the conduct of human nutrition research

• Enhance cross-disciplinary collaboration among investigators in nutrition research 

• Increase the research base in nutritional sciences at UNC Chapel Hill (both in funding and the number of investigators)

• Develop and assist new and established investigators entering into the field of nutrition

• Translate findings from nutrition research to the general public in order to improve their overall health and well-being

The Nutrition Obesity Research Center supports five research cores:

• Core A - Administrative and Biostatistics 

• Core B - Nutrition Epidemiology

• Core C - Molecular Biology and Nutritional Biochemistry

• Core D -CHAI (Nutrition Behavioral Intervention)

• Core E - Animal Metabolism and Phenotyping