Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center provides a wonderful environment for our research participants, our scientists, our team members and our partners. The Human Studies Program is housed on the first floor of the ACNC and contains: the Inpatient Unit; the Outpatient Unit; the Recruiting Program; Anthropometrics/Body Composition Laboratory; Clinical Nutrition Laboratory; Psychological Testing Laboratory; and Brain Development/Function Laboratory.

The Inpatient Unit, established in 1998, was designed to house the best tools and equipment available to clinicians and researchers while maintaining a high level of comfort for our participants.  It has 6 overnight rooms with fully equipped bathrooms, two clinic rooms dedicated to the measurement of food intake and diet evaluation, a lounge with a large TV/DVD/computer games, a large play room, a nurses' station, two interview rooms, a dining room and a kitchen.

The Outpatient Unit has four clinic rooms, two of which have one-way observation windows, an indirect calorimetry room, a phlebotomy room and blood preparation lab.  

The Human Nutrition Laboratory contains all the facilities to process human samples (urine, blood, tissues): laminar flow hoods; incubators; centrifuges; refrigerators/freezers, etc.

The Anthropometrics/Body Composition Laboratory has three body composition labs, a quiet room for infant feeding, two anthropometric rooms and office space for nutritionists and dieticians. 

The Brain Development/Function Laboratory has three sound attenuated suites and office space for the entire staff.

The Psychological Testing Laboratory has two testing rooms especially designed and equipped for children and their parents, as well as an interconnecting observational room and a waiting room.


The Human Studies Facility is organized by specialty (Core) to ensure all components of our research studies are fully equipped and appropriately staffed. The Inpatient Unit is staffed 6 days a week.

Learn more about our different Cores: