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The Agricultural Research Service &

Tufts University

The USDA Jean Mayer Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging  (HNRCA) is one of six human nutrition research centers in the United States supported by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the research arm of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).  HNRCA is located adjacent to the Tufts University Health Sciences campus near Tufts Medical Center in the heart of Chinatown in Boston, Massachusetts. We are staffed by ARS researchers, Tufts University staff, and Center scientists who are trained in a variety of disciplines such as nutrition, biochemistry, physiology, epidemiology, and molecular biology. 

Their goal is to try to determine the interrelationships of nutrition, aging and health. 

This diversity of research disciplines improves the opportunities for determining critical relationships between nutrition and mental and physical well-being in aging populations.  The cooperative research between USDA-ARS and Tufts University enhances the effectiveness of both organizations to accomplish research missions that seek to improve the quantity and quality of life for older Americans (65+).

The percentage of Americans who are 65 or older has gone from 4.1 percent in 1900 to 12.4 percent in the year 2000.  Some indicators project that by the year 2050 Americans 65 or older may comprise over 20 percent of the total American population.  The results of the cooperative research between ARS and Tufts University at HNRCA will be increasingly important to one-eighth of the current population and their families and to more than one-fifth of the U.S. population and their families in the future.

To leave the USDA-ARS website and enter the Tufts University HNRCA, please click here:  (A new window will open to permit easy switching between the two sites.)