OBSSR Releases 2025-2029 Strategic Plan

On October 15, the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) released its Strategic Plan for 2025-2029. This is OBSSR’s fourth strategic plan in its 27-year history.

The plan, which was developed over the last three years with input from the stakeholder community, also reflects recommendations made in recent years by two NIH Council of Councils working groups on Trans-NIH Research Opportunities in the Basic Behavioral and Social Sciences (2021) and Integration of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research at NIH (2022). 

The new strategic plan emphasizes health equity as a crosscutting theme and identifies three research priorities: (1) Coordinating and promoting collaborative science; (2) Encouraging innovative scientific investigation; and (3) Committing to implementation, dissemination, and equitable impact of research and its relevance for policy consideration. The plan also contains “scientific capacity” priorities pertaining to BSSR workforce development and “operational” priorities focusing on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, collaborative partnerships within and outside of NIH, and effective communication of research findings.

The full strategic plan can be found here.