Health Affairs | NIH
In August, Nature reported that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has begun turning away grant applications whose main purpose is to inform policy makers and legislators, quoting an internal agency document: “Policymakers are not considered a stakeholder group within the scope of NIH’s mission.” For those of us who conduct or draw upon research on how laws and policies affect health, this was a startling declaration—and the clearest signal yet that NIH may be retreating from a longstanding commitment to studying the policy determinants of health.