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( National Institutes of Health)
Coordinates 39°00'02?N 77°06'09?W? / ?39.000443, -77.102394 The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation. As of 2003, the Institutes are responsible for 28%—about $28 billion—of the total biomedical research funding spent annually in the U.S., with most of the rest coming from industry.[1] The NIH is divided into two parts the "Extramural" parts of NIH are responsible for the funding of biomedical research outside of NIH, while the "Intramural" parts of NIH conduct research. Intramural research is primarily conducted at the main campus in Bethesda in unincorporated Montgomery County, Maryland, and the surrounding communities. The National Institute of Aging and the National Institute on Drug Abuse are located in Baltimore, Maryland, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is in Research Triangle, North Carolina. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases NIAID maintains Rocky Mountain Labs in Hamilton, Montana,[2] with an emphasis on virology. The predecessor of the NIH began in 1887 as the Laboratory of Hygiene. It grew and was reorganized in 1930 by the Ransdell Act into the National Institute of Health (singular at the time). Today it is one of the world's foremost medical research centers, and the Federal focal point for medical research in the U.S. The NIH, comprising 27 separate institutes, centers and the Office of the Director, is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The current NIH Acting Director is Raynard Kington.
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