Key Dates

Related Announcements

None

Issued by

National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD)

Purpose

This Notice is a Request for Information (RFI) inviting feedback on the NIH Minority Health and Health Disparities Strategic Plan, 2026-2030.

NOTE: Please read this entire RFI notice to help you develop an adequate response and to give you a full understanding of how your response will be utilized.

Background

The NIH Minority Health and Health Disparities Strategic Plan (2026-2030) outlines the NIH vision for minority health and health disparities science across its activities. The Strategic Plan will guide NIH in setting scientific goals, such as deepening the understanding of health disparities, enhancing research activities, strengthening research capacity, and developing the scientific workforce. It reflects the Institutes and Centers’ (IC) commitment to improving minority health, reducing health disparities, fostering workforce development, and building the capacity to generate the scientific knowledge needed to improve health for all.

The 2021-2025 NIH Minority Health and Health Disparities Strategic Plan serves as a foundation for the 2026-2030 plan, illustrating NIH's ongoing dedication to addressing health disparities through rigorous scientific research, collaboration, and dissemination efforts. The upcoming plan will build on the progress made, furthering efforts to improve minority health and reduce health disparities through enhanced research activities.

Training the next generation of researchers and empowering communities to engage in research that drives positive change is essential. This workforce must be trained to leverage advances in technologies, methodologies, and data improve care quality, safety, healthcare efficiency, and reduce disease burden. The Strategic Plan will highlight key issues and propose strategies to improve health and reduce disparities by targeting intrinsic, extrinsic, and idiopathic causes, identifying optimal treatments, and focusing on prevention.

The 2026-2030 Strategic Plan will build on the progress of its predecessor, maintaining and expanding current goals to continue advancing minority health and reducing health disparities.

NIH Minority Health and Health Disparities Strategic Plan, 2026-2030 Proposed Goals:

1. Promote research to understand and to improve the health of racial and/or ethnic minority populations.
2. Advance scientific understanding of the causes of health disparities.
3. Develop and test interventions to reduce health disparities and improve racial and/or ethnic minority health.
4. Ensure inclusion of NIH-designated populations experiencing health disparities in NIH-funded research.
5. Develop and improve scientific methods, metrics, measures, analytic tools, and technologies that support health disparities research and improve racial and/or ethnic minority health.
6. Support training to enhance diversity and promote career advancement of minority health and health disparities investigators.
7. Strengthen national capacity to conduct racial and/or ethnic minority health and health disparities research.
8. Expand interdisciplinary capacity among community partners to advance racial and/or ethnic minority health and health disparities science.
9. Promote evidence-based community engagement, dissemination, and implementation of research best practices.

Request for Public Input

NIH is seeking public input to identify the most pressing concerns in minority health and health disparities for the next five years. Each goal will include potential research strategies that can be utilized to demonstrate advancements.  Given that these goals may not be fully attainable within five years, it is essential to focus on priority areas that can yield significant improvements on population health.

Request for Comments

This RFI invites input from a wide range of constituents, including academic institutions, scientists, clinicians and health professionals, scientific or professional societies or foundations, community-based organizations, advocacy groups, federal partners, the private sector, as well as other interested members of the public. Your feedback is crucial in shaping NIH's efforts to address health disparities. Please provide comments on any of the following:

1.Proposed Goals (listed above):

• The comprehensiveness of the goals to address key areas of minority health and health disparities
• Suggested priorities, considering the major causes of disease and death in the U.S., populations experiencing a disproportionate burden due to preventable or avoidable contributors, and limited resources 

2. Research Strategies and Scientific Areas:

• Research areas that have strong potential to yield short-term positive impacts on minority health and health disparities
• Challenging but necessary scientific areas that should be included to foster long-term advancements
• Key research questions and intervention areas to address over the next five years
• Outreach strategies to accelerate the translation of scientific knowledge and best practices into practice
• Approaches and strategies to train and empower communities to participate in all areas of NIH research, including technology development and artificial intelligence
• Priority methods, metrics, technologies, tools for development or refinement

3. Next Generation of Health Disparities Research:

• How can this plan move the field forward
• Benefits or challenges to highlight in strategic plan development and advancing the science
• Strategies that could be used to capture emerging needs

4. Other Relevant Topics

• Please share any additional topics NIH should consider in developing this strategic plan.

NIH encourages organizations to submit a single response reflective of their views. Please note that no synthesis report will be generated, and formal feedback will not be provided.  However, all input will be considered in the development of the NIH Minority Health and Health Disparities strategic plan (2026-2030).  Your insights are invaluable and greatly appreciated.

How to Submit a Response

We encourage you to use this link to submit your response electronically.  This format will enable the process of the information more efficiently. Additional information regarding the strategic plan and submission can also be found at this link.

Comments may also be submitted electronically to the following email address:  [email protected]

Non-electronic/digital input can be sent by mail in care of:

c/o Josue Lemus

National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD)

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Democracy II

6707 Democracy Blvd., Ste 207

Room 207I

Bethesda, MD 20892-5465

Responses must be received by 11:59:59 pm (ET) on December 31, 2024.

Responses to this RFI are voluntary and may be submitted anonymously. Please do not include any personally identifiable information or any information that you do not wish to make public. Proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should not be included in your response. The Government will use the information submitted in response to this RFI at its discretion. The Government reserves the right to use any submitted information on public websites, in reports, in summaries of the state of the science, in any possible resultant solicitation(s), grant(s), or cooperative agreement(s), or in the development of future funding opportunity announcements. This RFI is for informational and planning purposes only and is not a solicitation for applications or an obligation on the part of the Government to provide support for any ideas identified in response to it. Please note that the Government will not pay for the preparation of any information submitted or for use of that information.

We appreciate and look forward to your input and hope that you will share this RFI opportunity with your colleagues. 

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

Kimberly Leeks, PhD, MPH
National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD)
Telephone: 301-435-2963
Email: [email protected]