National Institutes of Health Map

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

National Institutes of Health logo
Aerial photo of the NIH Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center, Bethesda, Maryland
Agency overview
Formed	August 1887; 133 years ago (1887-08)
Preceding agency	Hygienic Laboratory
Headquarters	Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.
Employees	20,262 (2012),[1] including 6,000 research scientists (2019).[2]
Annual budget	US$39 billion (2019)[2] US$37 billion[3] (2018)[4]
Agency executives	Francis Collins, Director Lawrence Tabak, Principal Deputy Director
Parent agency	Department of Health & Human Services
Child agencies	National Cancer Institute National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute National Library of Medicine
Website	www.nih.gov

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) (/ɛn.aɪ.ˈeɪtʃ/) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late 1880s and is now part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The majority of NIH facilities are located in Bethesda, Maryland and other nearby suburbs of the Washington metropolitan area, with other primary facilities in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina and smaller satellite facilities located around the United States. The NIH conducts its own scientific research through its Intramural Research Program (IRP) and provides major biomedical research funding to non-NIH research facilities through its Extramural Research Program.

As of 2013^[update], the Intramural Research Program (IRP) had 1,200 principal investigators and more than 4,000 postdoctoral fellows in basic, translational, and clinical research, being the largest biomedical research institution in the world,^[5] while, as of 2003, the extramural arm provided 28% of biomedical research funding spent annually in the U.S., or about US$26.4 billion.^[6]

The NIH comprises 27 separate institutes and centers of different biomedical disciplines and is responsible for many scientific accomplishments, including the discovery of fluoride to prevent tooth decay, the use of lithium to manage bipolar disorder, and the creation of vaccines against hepatitis, Haemophilus influenzae (HIB), and human papillomavirus (HPV).^[7]

In 2019, the NIH was ranked number two in the world, behind Harvard University, for biomedical sciences in the Nature Index, which measured the largest contributors to papers published in a subset of leading journals from 2015 to 2018.^[8][9]