The National Institutes of Health (NIH), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is a national medical research agency that makes important discoveries that improve health and save lives.
The National Institutes of Health is made up of 27 different components called institutes and centers . Each has its own research program, often focusing on specific diseases or body systems. All but three of these components receive funding directly from Congress and manage their own budgets. NIH management plays an active role in shaping the agency’s research plan, activities, and vision.
The Office of the Director is the central office responsible for setting NIH policy and for planning, managing, and coordinating the programs and activities of all NIH components.
For more than a century, National Institutes of Health scientists have paved the way for important discoveries that improve health and save lives. In fact, 156 Nobel Prize winners have been supported by the National Institutes of Health. Their research led to the development of MRIs, understanding how viruses can cause cancer, understanding cholesterol control and knowing how our brains process visual information, among dozens of other advances.
Roots of NIH
The National Institutes of Health traces its history back to 1887, when the Marine Hospitals Service (MHS), the predecessor agency to the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS), established a one-room laboratory.
The MHS was created in 1798 to provide medical care for merchant seamen. In the 1880s Congress instructed the MHS to screen passengers on arriving ships for clinical signs of infectious diseases, especially the dreaded diseases cholera and yellow fever, in order to prevent epidemics.
NIH’s mission is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and to apply that knowledge to improve health, prolong life, and reduce disease and disability.
The goals of the agency are to:
- Promote fundamental creative discoveries, innovative research strategies, and their application as the basis for ultimately protecting and improving health;
- to develop, maintain and update the scientific human and physical resources that will ensure the nation’s ability to prevent disease;
- expand the knowledge base in medicine and allied sciences to enhance the economic well-being of the nation and ensure a continued high return on public investment in research; and
- exemplify and promote the highest level of scientific integrity, public accountability, and social responsibility in the conduct of science.
In pursuing these goals, NIH provides leadership and direction for programs designed to improve the nation’s health by conducting and supporting research
- In the causes, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of human disease;
- In the processes of human growth and development;
- in the biological effects of environmental pollutants;
- in understanding mental, addictive, and physical disorders; and
- in directing programs for the collection, dissemination, and exchange of medical and health information, including the development and support of medical libraries and the training of medical librarians and other health information professionals.
