Washington Update

NIH Releases New Strategic Plan

By: Yvette Seger
Thursday, August 12, 2021

In late July, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years (FYs) 2021–2025. The agency is required to update its strategic plan every five years per the 21st Century Cures Act. FASEB was pleased to see the majority of its input on the draft plan incorporated into this final version.

The most current strategic plan builds upon the previous (FY 2016–2020) plan and is intended to articulate NIH’s highest priorities for the next five years, centered around three key objectives:

  • Advancing biomedical and behavioral sciences
  • Developing, maintaining, and renewing scientific research capacity
  • Exemplifying and promoting the highest level of scientific integrity, public accountability, and social responsibility in the conduct of science

Five cross-cutting themes—including improving minority health and health disparities, enhancing women’s health, addressing public health challenges across the lifespan, promoting collaborative science, and leveraging data science for biomedical discovery—are integrated across the three key objective areas.

The NIH-wide Strategic Plan provides a high-level framework for the U.S. investment in biomedical research whereas the strategic plans for individual NIH Institutes and Centers will continue to define research priorities for specific disease areas.