The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The purpose of the NIH is to pursue “fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.” Toward that end, the NIH conducts its own public health and biomedical research as well as making health-related information widely available through its National Library of Medicine (NLM). The NLM is the largest library of biomedical materials in the world.
Within the NIH, there are over two dozen separate institutes and centers, most notably the National Cancer Institute, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Library of Medicine, and the National Institute on Aging.
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