National Institutes of Health

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research – helping to lead the way toward important medical discoveries that improve people's health and save lives.

NIH supports and conducts medical research to understand how the human body works and to gain insight into countless diseases and disorders, from rare and unusual diseases to more familiar ones like the common cold.