An ad hoc panel will review the Consumer Food and Nutrition Data System (CFNDS) program for the Economic Research Service (ERS) in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and provide guidance for its advancement over the next 10 years. Among the key components of the ERS food and nutrition data infrastructure are: the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS), supplemental modules to existing federal surveys, administrative data residing in USDA and other agencies, commercial data sources, and the capacity to perform linkages across databases. The value of the CFNDS program is realized from supporting research that informs high-priority current—and anticipated future—policy questions, some of which are state and locally focused (e.g., research on school lunch menus and nutrition, and on food choices of households given the distribution of retail outlets). The ultimate goal of the CFNDS program is to advance understanding of the impacts of the food environment, food assistance programs, and other public health policies on a range of behaviors and outcomes related to participation in programs, food acquisition patterns and where food is obtained, dietary choices, and nutrition.

The ad hoc panel will also seek to identify data gaps and to anticipate how evolving policy priorities may affect data needs. Special attention, for example, is often required to capture: expenditure and consumption information on difficult-to-survey demographic groups; information on purchases for certain categories of food (e.g., snacks, meals consumed for “free”); and acquisition, sales or volume information from some types of food outlets (e.g., food pantries, independent stores).

Accessibility of data by the user community also affects the return on public investment and is therefore an important consideration in a longer-term data infrastructure plan. The panel’s recommendations should recognize the rapidly changing data landscape in which surveys have become more costly and lower-burden alternative data sources have emerged. Changing consumer food shopping modes (e.g., increased food shopping on-line) will likely continue to elevate the importance to researchers of non-survey data sources such as proprietary data and administrative data. Assessing the quality, coverage, and representativeness of these data sources will be increasingly important. Maximizing the potential of the full range of information sources by ERS and other statistical agencies will require coordination among them to avoid duplicating efforts.

As part of its information-gathering activities, the panel will conduct a series of public sessions to ascertain the views of data providers, data users, and survey experts. The panel will produce a consensus report with conclusions and recommendations about the future of the CFNDS, which incorporates discussion at the public sessions.