For more than fifty years, CSPI has been a leading advocate on nutrition and food safety issues with an impressive record of accomplishments, including recent wins in food labeling, reducing foodborne disease contamination, and removing harmful food additives, like the artificial (and carcinogenic) food dye Red 3. But we’re not resting on our victories, and we’re not giving up on our commitments to your health and wellbeing: CSPI’s board of directors recently approved a new and ambitious strategic plan to guide organizational direction and priorities for the next five years.
CSPI’s programmatic portfolio is expanding to cover health (including drug and medical device regulation) in addition to our existing priorities for improving nutrition and food safety. Our updated mission statement reflects this expansion:
CSPI advocates for evidence-based and community-informed policies on nutrition, food safety, and health; holds government agencies and corporations to account; and empowers consumers with independent, unbiased information to live healthier lives.
Emerging from a yearlong collaborative and inclusive process, CSPI’s strategic plan incorporates perspectives from as many as 80 people, including staff, board, and external partners and supporters. In addition to clarifying and confirming CSPI’s positioning and approach to advocacy, the planning process has facilitated greater staff collaboration and helped us build a cohesive vision for the future.
Our north star is to improve the health and wellbeing for people in all communities, regardless of race, income, education, or social factors. The following eight strategic priorities will guide CSPI’s activities over the next five years:
- Improve access, availability, and affordability of nutritious foods, and reduce barriers to consuming a healthy diet.
- Advance effective food safety protections to prevent food from making consumers sick.
- Improve safety, accuracy, affordability, availability, and/or accessibility of drugs and medical devices.
- Champion health equity through developing community-informed policies that address the root causes of health disparities in the United States.
- Advance environmentally sustainable food production and consumption.
- Sharpen CSPI’s programmatic portfolio to respond to emerging needs and opportunities and to uphold transparency and scientific integrity.
- Strengthen organizational structure, staffing, culture, and technology that is grounded in trust and transparency, fosters staff and institutional growth, rationalizes workflows, realizes cost savings, and prioritizes work across teams.
- Transform the business model into a more diverse revenue portfolio to achieve financial sustainability.
With a new administration taking charge in 2025, there are new challenges to face now and in the coming years. CSPI is confident in our ability to navigate any political and administrative changes that will impact public health. Our commitment to science-based nutrition and public health interventions has not wavered. Guided by a new strategic plan, we will deploy our diverse toolbox—including advocacy, policy research and analysis, communications, and partnerships—to defend and promote our priorities as we have successfully done through many administrations. To do so, CSPI will invest in and focus efforts on:
- defending recent gains backed by evidence-based policies and regulations;
- upholding health equity and environmental sustainability as core pillars to inform all that we do;
- serving as a trusted resource for consumers by dispelling dis- and misinformation;
- focusing on and supporting state and local advocacy opportunities and partnerships; and
- expanding litigation avenues to accomplish advocacy goals.
CSPI envisions thriving communities supported by equitable, sustainable, and science-based solutions to advancing nutrition, food safety, and health. We take no donations from industry or government and rely on support from you. We appreciate our existing supporters and partners and share gratitude in advance to those who will join us to bring our shared vision for a safer, healthier, more equitable future to fruition.
