National Institutes of Health (USA)

National Institutes of Health (NIH). The primary agency of the U.S. government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late 1880s and is now part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Many 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 U.S.

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).

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.