NIH Announces Implementation Plan for Unified Funding Strategy

By: Yvette Seger
Wednesday, December 17, 2025
In August, Jayanta Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), issued a statement announcing the adoption of a unified strategy to ensure funded research aligns with the agency’s mission. On November 21, NIH issued additional details about this strategy, including the implementation framework to be utilized by NIH Institutes and Centers (I/Cs) when finalizing funding decisions.

Beginning with the January 2026 Advisory Councils, I/Cs will implement funding policies to meet the five tenets of the unified strategy:

1. Alignment with the NIH mission;
2. Prioritization of scientific merit;
3. Integration of a range of topics and approaches relevant to I/C priorities;
4. Consideration of funding distribution (e.g., geographic and individual investigator); and
5. Alignment with the availability of I/C funds.

Prior to the adoption of the unified strategy, approximately half of NIH’s I/Cs used “paylines” (i.e., a “cutoff” in overall impact scores) to determine funding decisions. This practice will be eliminated under the new policy, with I/C Directors and Program staff having more flexibility to use strategic priorities and peer review feedback to fund projects that fulfill key research gaps.