The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) is an American government health institute. It is part of the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

(NIH). The stated mission of the NIMHD is to "lead scientific research to improve minority health and eliminate health disparities."

History

By the passage of the Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education Act, NIMHD was established in 2000 as an NIH center with the initial title of National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD). It became a full institute, with its present name, on September 13, 2010, under the

Affordable Care Act The Affordable Care Act (ACA), formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and colloquially known as Obamacare, is a landmark U.S. federal statute enacted by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by Presid ...

Leadership

John Ruffin was the first director of the NIMHD, serving until he retired in 2014.NIMHD: History.
National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, National Institutes of Health. Yvonne T. Maddox became acting director in April 2014. Eliseo Pérez-Stable, MD was appointed director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities Research on September 1, 2015.

Directors

Past Directors from 1990 - present

Definitions

NIMHD addresses disparities in minority health in the United States. It defines minority health as "all aspects of health and disease in one or more racial/ethnic minority populations as defined by the Office of Management and Budget, including Blacks/African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, Asians, American Indians/Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians/other Pacific Islanders." It includes minority classes such as "socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, underserved rural populations, and sexual and gender minorities."

Strategic plan

NIMHD is developing the 2021-2025 NIH Minority Health and Health Disparities Strategic Plan, which will outline the immediate goals of the institute. They are defined in three thematic areas: scientific research, research sustaining activities, and outreach, collaboration, and dissemination. The strategic plan is to be released in 2021.Strategic Plan.
NIMHD. Accessed 2 March 2021.

Research topics

Goals in the strategic plan include understanding the causes of minority health disparities, developing interventions to reduce disparities and tools to evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions, increasing minority participation in National Institutes of Health research, and increasing community engagement in the process. Former acting director Maddox describes tailoring research to address many factors, or "health determinants", that contribute to "health burdens" in minority populations, such as "biological risk factors, behavioral risk factors, social/economic factors, health systems, resiliency/protective factors, quality of life experiences, and environmental/physical factors." Director Pérez-Stable attributes health disparities in

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

communities to "structural racism", which results in segregated neighborhoods, limited access to nutrition, higher levels of environmental pollution, low-quality housing, and inadequate education and employment opportunities, which increase poverty and chronic stress.Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, speaks with APA.
News. American Psychological Association. 1 November 2020.

References

{{authority control National Institutes of Health Government agencies established in 2000 Medical research institutes in the United States