In order to advance its mission and fulfill requirements of the 21st Century Cures Act, NIH will update its Strategic Plan every 5 years. The most recent iteration, the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2021–2025, is an update on the previous plan for fiscal years 2016–2020.
The Strategic Plan outlines NIH’s vision for biomedical research direction, capacity, and stewardship, by articulating the highest priorities of NIH over the next 5 years. In addition, it provides illustrative examples of accomplishments under the last plan and new initiatives under this one. The Strategic Plan was developed through collaboration between leadership and staff across NIH and key stakeholders, including the research community, professional societies, advocacy groups, and the public.
The NIH-Wide Strategic Plan is designed to complement and harmonize Institute and Center (IC) strategic plans across NIH, which address their individual missions
NIH designed a Framework to inform development of the Strategic Plan. This Framework identifies areas of opportunity that apply across biomedical research and unifying principles to guide NIH in supporting the biomedical research enterprise. The Framework includes three key Objectives that outline NIH’s priorities as aligned with the agency’s goals. Across all of these priorities, NIH emphasizes several Cross-Cutting Themes—approaches that are common to all Objectives of the Strategic Plan.
In September 2019, NIH began updating the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan to cover fiscal years 2021–2025, adopting a process that was meant to be transparent, focused on science and good stewardship of research, guided by evidence, and informed by NIH’s many stakeholders.
The four phases of the strategic planning process included:
The NIH Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives (DPCPSI) within the Office of the Director (OD), coordinated the development of the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2021–2025. DPCPSI developed a timeline for the strategic planning process and established an internal NIH-Wide Strategic Plan Working Group, comprised of staff from each IC and OD Offices. The first Working Group meeting was held at the end of September 2019.
From October to December 2019, the Working Group met every two weeks to develop the Framework for the Strategic Plan, which outlines NIH’s priorities for biomedical and behavioral research to be addressed over the next five years. The proposed Framework was reviewed by the IC Directors at the end of October, the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director in December, and the DPCPSI Council of Councils in January 2020. The final Framework was approved by NIH Leadership.
In parallel with development of the Framework, ICs and OD offices were asked to provide information on biomedical and behavioral research advances that have been made under the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2016–2020, and proposed activities that will be conducted over the next five years. Based on the provided content, the Working Group proposed for NIH Leadership’s approval the top accomplishments and priorities for each section of the Framework.
NIH recognizes that input from external stakeholders—including members of the scientific and health care communities, professional societies, advocacy organizations, industry, other federal agencies, and the general public—provides invaluable insight into the strategic planning process.
In order to solicit comments on the proposed Framework from external stakeholders, the Working Group developed a Request for Information (RFI) in the NIH Guide (NOT-OD-20-064) and the Federal Register (FRN 2020–02919), which was advertised broadly. Comments were accepted online from February 12, 2020 to April 1, 2020. NIH received 160 responses to the RFI from external stakeholders, which are summarized in a report.
NIH also hosted webinars on March 9 and 16, 2020, to present the Strategic Plan development process and Framework, and for stakeholders to ask questions and provide comments during a question and answer period (Q&A). The webinar presentation slides and transcript are available, in addition to the transcripts for the March 9 Q&A, and March 16 Q&A.
In January 2020, the Working Group began drafting the Strategic Plan based on the Framework and the prioritized content approved by NIH Leadership and incorporated public feedback.
The draft Strategic Plan was finalized through an iterative review process with NIH Leadership. Beginning in July 2020, the draft Strategic Plan was reviewed by IC and OD Office Directors, and subsequently by the NIH Director and Deputy Director. It was then reviewed by the DPCPSI Council of Councils and the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director. Following final review and approval by the NIH Director and Deputy Director, and subsequent sign off by the Department of Health and Human Services, the final version of the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2021-2025 was published.
This page last reviewed on July 30, 2021
