NIH Releases Minority Health and Health Disparities Strategic Plan for 2021-2025

The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has released its strategic plan for 2021 through 2025 to advance minority health and health disparities research across all NIH institutes, offices, and centers. The strategic plan, which was developed with input across the NIH and the minority health and health disparity research community, lays out goals and strategies for the agency to advance additional scientific research, support research-adjacent activities, and expand outreach and strategic communications on minority health and health disparities. These goals and strategies include:

• Promoting research to understand and improve the health of racial and ethnic minority populations.
• Advancing scientific understanding of the causes of health disparities.
• Developing and testing interventions to reduce disparities.
• Creating and improving scientific methods to support health disparities research.
• Supporting trainings and career advancement to enhance diversity and promote minority health and health disparities research.
• Strengthening capacity to conduct minority health and health disparities research.
• Ensuring representation of minority and other health disparity populations in NIH-funded research.
• Promoting evidence-based community engagement of best practices.
• Cultivating and expanding the community of minority health and health disparities researchers and advocates.

Both the strategic plan and an interactive webpage to explore the contents of the plan are available on the NIH website.