The National Institutes of Health
Summary
NIH runs the world's largest public funder of biomedical research on a $46.5 billion FY2026 program level and 17,208 federal employees -- while the cancer-mortality decline NIH credits to that funding (a 1.5%-a-year average drop among children, 2001-2022) is independently confirmed by federal cancer surveillance tracking the same trend for two decades, a pandemic included.
What is this organization?
What does it do?
funded 38,611 research project grants in FY2026, including 9,712 newly competed awards at a 14.9% success rate -- funding that runs mostly to outside universities and hospitals, not 's own buildings. Its Intramural Research program and Clinical Center run trials in-house. 's own budget documents count 174 researchers who have received or shared 104 Nobel Prizes among the scientists it has supported.
What does it cost to run — money and people?
Congress enacted $46.5 billion in FY2026 program-level funding for -- $44.87 billion in discretionary budget authority, $200 million in mandatory Type 1 Diabetes research, and $1.43 billion in program evaluation financing -- supporting 17,208 FTEs, down from 18,733 in FY2025. Both figures, per 's own comparability convention, exclude $990.9 million and 561 FTE at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which the FY2027 budget proposes moving to the but which stayed part of for all of FY2026. Against the Census Bureau's 341.8 million U.S. residents⧉ as of July 2025, that's about $136.04 per person.
View data as table
| Research Project Grants | 27,207.7 | competing + noncompeting grants to outside labs |
|---|---|---|
| Intramural Research | 4,916.8 | NIH's own labs and Clinical Center |
| R&D Contracts | 3,286.3 | |
| Other Research | 3,119.4 | research careers, cooperative clinical research, and more |
| Research Centers | 2,579.9 | specialized and comprehensive centers |
| All other mechanisms | 5,387.2 | management & support, training, buildings & facilities, other |
Why is it good for society?
funds the basic-to-translational research pipeline that produces new treatments no single company or university underwrites alone. The counterfactual sits in 's own budget record and in the field's independent surveillance: cancer death rates fell an average of 1.5% a year among children from 2001 to 2022, a decline ties to sustained cancer-research investment, and the Annual Report to the Nation confirms the broader trend has held for more than two decades, continuing even through the COVID-19 pandemic. Research funding is the mechanism; without it, that pipeline has no other actor paying to run it at this scale.
- 's FY2026 program level ($46.5 billion, 17,208 FTEs) works out to about $136.04 per U.S. resident -- funding that runs mostly to outside grantees ($27.2 billion in Research Project Grants) rather than 's own buildings ($4.9 billion in Intramural Research).
- The cancer-mortality decline cites as its payoff -- a 1.5%-a-year average drop among children from 2001 to 2022 -- is independently confirmed by the joint federal-and-professional Annual Report to the Nation, which finds the broader decline has held for two decades, including through the pandemic.
Your handles.* Applying for research funding? Start with NIH's How to Apply guide. Looking for an -funded clinical trial to join? Search ClinicalTrials.gov. Concerned about research misconduct in PHS-funded work? HHS's Office of Research Integrity handles allegations.
Sources(6) ▾
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, Office of Budget, National Institutes of Health FY 2027 Congressional Justification -- Consolidated Overview of FY 2027 Budget (2026-04-03) — 's own FY2027 congressional budget justification -- the All Purpose Table (p.27), Impact of Budget Level on Performance table (p.28), Budget Mechanism Table (p.29), and Detail of Full-Time Equivalent Employment table (p.72) give this entry's FY2025 Final / FY2026 Enacted program-level, budget-authority, mechanism-breakdown, and figures. Also the source for 's grant/workload counts (p.27-28), the Nobel Prize count and economic-impact framing (p.3), and the cancer-mortality counterfactual (p.35). officeofbudget.od.nih.gov
- Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives (uscode.house.gov), 42 U.S.C. § 281 -- Organization of National Institutes of Health (2026-07-16) — The current U.S. Code section establishing as an agency of the Public Health Service, with the source note tracing the provision to the Public Health Service Act of July 1, 1944 (ch. 373, title IV, sec. 401), as added by Pub. L. 99-158 (Nov. 20, 1985) -- the statutory foundation cited in this entry's identity section. uscode.house.gov
- National Institutes of Health, History -- National Institutes of Health (About NIH / Organization) (2026-07-16) — 's own official history page -- source for the 1887 founding date, when a one-room laboratory was created within the Marine Hospital Service, the seed this entry's identity section traces forward from. nih.gov
- National Institutes of Health, About NIH (2026-07-16) — 's own statement of its place within ("a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services") and its mission statement, quoted in this entry's identity section. nih.gov
- National Cancer Institute (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Cancer Society, North American Association of Central Cancer Registries, Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer (2026-07-16) — The joint federal-statistical cancer-surveillance report (NCI is one of 's own institutes) -- source for the independent corroboration of the cancer-mortality decline this entry cites as its counterfactual: sustained decline for over 20 years, including through the COVID-19 pandemic, and a 1.5%/year average decline among children (2001-2022). seer.cancer.gov
- U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Population Growth Slows Due to Historic Decline in Net International Migration (Vintage 2025 national population estimate) (2026-01-27) — The source for the July 1, 2025 U.S. resident population estimate (341.8 million) used as this entry's per-resident KPI denominator. Same document good-citizen-cms, good-citizen-hhs-oig, and good-citizen-dod-oig already rely on; capture URL reused from that prior seal (Wayback SPN was returning HTTP 520 outage errors on this iteration's own probe). census.gov · original document
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traces its roots to 1887, when a one-room laboratory opened inside the Marine Hospital Service. 42 U.S.C. § 281(a) makes it "an agency of the [Public Health] Service," a provision tracing to the Public Health Service Act of July 1, 1944. NIH is a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services -- an operating division, not a program inside one -- and calls itself the nation's medical research agency.