The Institute of Medicine's (IOM's) Food Forum was established in 1993 to allow science and technology leaders in the food industry, top administrators in the federal government, representatives from consumer interest groups, and academicians to discuss and debate food and food safety issues openly and in a neutral setting. The Forum provides a mechanism for these diverse groups to identify possible approaches for addressing food and food safety problems and issues surrounding the often complex interactions among industry, academia, regulatory agencies, and consumers. On May 6-7, 1997, the Forum convened a workshop titled Enhancing the Regulatory Decision-Making Process for Direct Food Ingredient Technologies. Workshop speakers and participants discussed legal aspects of the direct food additive approval process, changes in science and technology, and opportunities for reform. Two background papers, which can be found in Appendix A and B, were shared with the participants prior to the workshop. The first paper provided a description and history of the legal framework of the food ingredient approval process and the second paper focused on changes in science and technology practices with emphasis placed on lessons learned from case studies. This document presents a summary of the workshop.

Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.