AIFN (Association of International Foods & Nutrition), international industry organization of nutraceutical foods*(including dietary supplement) announced to change its name (former NNFA Japan) to AIFN and selected a new chairman with a view to launching international activities at the annual meeting on May 27th. As for the new strategy, AIFN will make an effort to increase the needs for dietary supplements by advocating “Health GDP*” through promoting studies with the cooperation of U.S industry organizations to figure out economic effect of taking dietary supplements. AIFN will build cooperative framework with IMJ (Integrative Medicine Japan) to encourage broad use of nutraceutical foods in medical and elderly care use.
1. New Organization: AIFN (Association of International Foods & Nutrition)
New Chairman:
John Venardos, Director of NPA/US CRN
Masashi Hashimoto as Executive Head and Kazuo Sueki as Chief Executive Officer remain in their posts.
[Newly-appointed]
Deputy Director/Chairman of Legal Affairs Committee: Tatsuyuki Hayashi (CANTOX Japan Office)
Deputy Director/Chairman of International Committee: Takeshi Takeda (Global Nutrition Group)
Deputy Director/Chairman of Public Relations Committee: Tomochika Hashiguchi (Institute of Holistic Herbology)
2. Advocating “Health GDP (Economic Theory in the Healthcare)”, Cooperative Strategy of U.S. Industry Organization
* “Health GDP” is a new concept advocated by AIFN. “Health GDP” is calculated by reducing losses such as medical costs from GDP. In order to increase the numeric value of GDP, decreasing healthcare cost is absolutely necessary and using nutraceutical foods (such as dietary supplements) is one of the important solutions to prevent developing illness. A U.S. Lewin Study was conducted to figure out cost reduction effect by using dietary supplements and brought to international attention as new theory of pharmaceutical policy.
*AIFN, especially Scientific Committee, will promote academic study project to examine domestic economic effect to cut medical costs by using dietary supplements under new “Health GDP(economic theory in the healthcare)”
* “nutraceutical foods” in the context does not mean specific term, but use as common word in a broad sense.