The National Institutes of Health (NIH), with headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, is the primary U.S. federal agency responsible for conducting and disseminating state-of-the-art health research to advance knowledge about the prevention, detection, and treatment of health problems and to improve health outcomes in the United States and throughout the world. It is widely regarded as the leading biomedical health research center in the world. The NIH is a major division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and is a very complex and multifaceted enterprise.

The primary goal of NIH research is to acquire new knowledge to help prevent, detect, diagnose, and treat disease and disability. NIH research examines a broad range of health issues, from the rarest genetic disorders to the causes ...