[2] The NIH was 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).

[3] 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.

[9] In 1930, the Hygienic Laboratory was re-designated as the National Institute of Health by the Ransdell Act, and was given $750,000 to construct two NIH buildings at the Old Naval Observatory campus.

[9] In 1944, the Public Health Service Act was approved and the National Cancer Institute became a division of the NIH.

[13]: 130  When three doctors resigned after refusing to inject patients without their consent, the experiment gained considerable media attention.

From then on, the NIH has required all grantee institutions to approve any research proposals involving human experimentation with review boards.

[13]: 135 In 1967, the Division of Regional Medical Programs was created to administer grants for research for heart disease, cancer, and strokes.

[17] On January 22, 2025, the Trump administration imposed an immediate freeze on meetings – such as grant review panels – as well as travel, communications, and hiring at the NIH, impacting $47.4 billion worth of activities.

[25] The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is located in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases maintains its Rocky Mountain Labs in Hamilton, Montana,[26] with an emphasis on BSL3 and BSL4 laboratory work.

[31] In 2008 a Congressional mandate called for investigators funded by the NIH to submit an electronic version of their final manuscripts to the National Library of Medicine's research repository, PubMed Central (PMC), no later than 12 months after the official date of publication.

Some of these include: In September 2006, the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research started a contract for the NIH Toolbox for the Assessment of Neurological and Behavioral Function to develop a set of state-of-the-art measurement tools to enhance collection of data in large cohort studies.

[39] According to the City Journal NIH denies access to such attributes as intelligence, education and health on the grounds that studying their genetic basis would be stigmatizing.

[43] Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NIH-funded EcoHealth Alliance has been the subject of controversy and increased scrutiny due to its ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—which has been at the center of speculation since early 2020 that SARS-CoV-2 may have escaped in a lab incident.

[49] On February 13, 2012, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a new group of individuals assigned to research pain.

With a committee such as this research will not be conducted by each individual organization or person but instead a collaborating group which will increase the information available.

This process begins with institute and center (IC) leaders collaborating with scientists to determine the most important and promising research areas within their fields.

OMB determines what amounts and research areas are approved for incorporation into the President's final budget.

For a time, funding essentially remained flat, and for seven years following the financial crisis, the NIH budget struggled to keep up with inflation.

[61] In 2017 and 2018, Congress passed laws with bipartisan support that substantially increasing appropriations for the NIH, which was 37.3 billion dollars annually in FY2018.

The NIH regularly issues "requests for applications" (RFAs), e.g., on specific programmatic priorities or timely medical problems (such as Zika virus research in early 2016).

Third, maintain a diverse research portfolio to capitalize on major discoveries in a variety of fields such as cell biology, genetics, physics, engineering, and computer science.

[68] In 2014, it was announced that the NIH is directing scientists to perform their experiments with both female and male animals, or cells derived from females as well as males if they are studying cell cultures, and that the NIH would take the balance of each study design into consideration when awarding grants.

[69] One of the goals of the NIH is to "expand the base in medical and associated sciences in order to ensure a continued high return on the public investment in research.

[74] In 2011 and 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General published a series of audit reports revealing that throughout the fiscal years 2000–2010, institutes under the aegis of the NIH did not comply with the time and amount requirements specified in appropriations statutes, in awarding federal contracts to commercial partners, committing the federal government to tens of millions of dollars of expenditure ahead of appropriation of funds from Congress.

[77] Modeled after DARPA, HSARPA, IARPA, and ARPA-E, it is intended to pursue unconventional research projects through methods not typically used by federal agencies or private sector companies.

[81][82] The Consensus Development Program is an initiative focused on gathering expert opinions to establish standards and guidelines in various fields, especially in health and medicine.

Developed as a collaborative effort by organizations such as the NIH, the program assembles panels of specialists who assess available evidence on critical topics and form recommendations to guide clinical practice and policy.

This method helps ensure that healthcare decisions are informed by the latest scientific research and expert consensus.