The National Institute for Health Releases Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2016-2020

The plan focuses on four essential, interdependent objectives that will help guide NIH’s priorities over the next five years as it pursues its mission of seeking fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and applying that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.  Those objectives are:

1. Advance opportunities in biomedical research in fundamental science, treatment and cures, and health promotion and disease prevention;
2. Foster innovation by setting NIH priorities to enhance nimbleness, consider burden of disease and value of permanently eradicating a disease, and advance research opportunities presented by rare diseases;
3. Enhance scientific stewardship by recruiting and retaining an outstanding biomedical research workforce, enhancing workforce diversity and impact through partnerships, ensuring rigor and reproducibility, optimizing approaches to inform funding decisions, encouraging innovation, and engaging in proactive risk management practices; and
4. Excel as a federal science agency by managing for results by developing the “science of science,” balancing outputs with outcomes, conducting workforce analyses, continually reviewing peer review, evaluating steps to enhance rigor and reproducibility, reducing administrative burden, and tracking effectiveness of risk management in decision making.

The plan concludes with a bold vision for NIH, listing some specific achievements and advances that the Agency will strive to deliver over the next five years.

Over the next five years, NIH leadership will evaluate the Agency’s progress, in meeting the objectives laid out in the strategic plan, which will be a living document that will be open to refinements throughout its life-cycle.   The plan is designed to complement the NIH’s Institutes, Centers, and Offices’ (ICOs) individual strategic plans that are aligned with their congressionally mandated missions.

We encourage you to learn more about the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan from their announcement and to share this announcement with others who may be interested.  You can also learn more from the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan website.