National Institutes of Health

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation. It consists of 27 separate institutes, centers, and offices which includes the Office of the Director. Francis S. Collins is the current Director.

As of 2003, the NIH was responsible for 28%—about US$26.4 billion—of the total biomedical research funding spent annually in the U.S., with most of the rest coming from industry.

The NIH's research is divided into two parts: the "Extramural" parts of NIH are responsible for the funding of biomedical research outside of NIH, while the "Intramural" parts of NIH are actively engaged in conducting research. Intramural research is primarily conducted at the main campus in Bethesda, Maryland and the surrounding communities. The National Institute of Aging and the National Institute on Drug Abuse are located in Baltimore, Maryland, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is in Research Triangle, North Carolina. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) maintains Rocky Mountain Labs in Hamilton, Montana, with an emphasis on virology.

The goal of NIH research is to acquire new knowledge to help prevent, detect, diagnose, and treat disease and disability, from the rarest genetic disorder to the common cold. The NIH mission is to uncover new knowledge that will lead to better health for everyone. NIH works toward that mission by conducting research in its own laboratories, supporting the research of non-Federal scientists (in universities, medical schools, hospitals, and research institutions throughout the country and abroad), helping in the training of research investigators, and fostering communication of medical and health sciences information.

Centers of the NIH
In addition to being divided by research area, NIH has many operating groups called centers operating across all of the Institutes.

Office of the Director
The Office of the Director is the central office at NIH. The OD is responsible for setting policy for NIH and for planning, managing, and coordinating the programs and activities of all the NIH components. Program offices in the Office of the Director are responsible for stimulating specific areas of research throughout NIH and for planning and supporting research and related activities. Current program areas are: minority health, women's health, AIDS research, disease prevention, and behavioral and social sciences research. In July 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Dr. Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., to be the Director of the NIH. On August 7, 2009, the US Senate confirmed Dr. Collins by unanimous vote.

Program offices within the Office of the Director fund research through the institutes:



History
The predecessor of the NIH began in 1887 as the Laboratory of Hygiene. It grew and was reorganized in 1930 by the Ransdell Act into the National Institute of Health (singular at the time).

Research
NIH devotes 10% of its funding to research within its own facilities (intramural research). They give 80% of its funding in research grants to extramural (outside) researchers. The extramural funding consists of about 50,000 grants to more than 325,000 researchers at more than 3000 institutions. , NIH spent US$10.7bn (not including temporary funding from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act) on clinical research, US$7.4bn on genetics-related research, US$6.0bn on prevention research, US$5.8bn on cancer, and US$5.7bn on biotechnology.

In 2011, a Science paper found that black researchers were 10% less likely to win NIH R01 grants (the oldest and most widely-used) than white researchers, after controlling for "educational background, country of origin, training, previous research awards, publication record, and employer characteristics." It also found that black researchers are significantly less likely to resubmit an unapproved grant than white researchers. The study lead and economist Donna Grant said that grant reviewers do not have access to the applicant race, but may infer it from biographies or names. She also speculated that the decreased re-submission rate may be due to lack of mentoring.

Economic impact
In 2000, a report from a Joint Economic Committee of Congress outlined the benefits of NIH research. It noted that some econometric studies had given its research, which was funded at $16 billion a year in 2000, a rate of return of 25 to 40 percent per year. It also found that of the 21 drugs with the highest therapeutic impact on society introduced between 1965 and 1992, public funding was "instrumental" for 15.