NIH Announcements and Updates

This page contains official statements released by the NIH Director. These statements provide information on policy and funding priorities, new initiatives and other information impacting NIH award announcements and funding.

The NIH Director Statements can be found in the NIH Director's site at the NIH. 

In an announcement on September 18, 2025, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya recognized Jon Lorsch as Deputy Director for Extramural Research. Dr. Lorsch had been serving in this role as an acting director since 2025. The role is intended to support NIH's efforts in gold standard science.

Dr. Lorsch left his post as NIH's Director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to fill this new role.

In a September 9 announcement, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya announced the release of the NIH Biosafety Modernization Initiative. In the plan for this initiative, the NIH plans to "revamp" biosafety oversight to address risks of newer tachnologies while reducing oversight for low-risk recombinant technologies. The initiative also includes plans to strengthen partnerships with Institutional Biosafety Committees to provide support and resources to these committees. 

The NIH plans to post "opportunities to engage" for researchers and the public at the NIH Biosafety and Biosecurity Policy page. 

In an August 25 statement on Maximizing and Safeguarding NIH’s Investment in Foreign Collaborations, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya announced that, in the interest of delivering "both scientific and taxpayer value" the NIH has established some guiding principles for international research:

1. "All research supported at international sites should have a clear scientific rationale to be conducted in a foreign country rather than in the United States.
2. All research supported at international sites should have direct potential to generate knowledge applicable to understanding, improving, or protecting the health of Americans."

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya released a statement on the NIH's new plan to drive "Gold Standard Science". The plan lists factors that characterize the NIH's requirements, stating that Gold Standard Science is:

• Reproducible
• Transparent
• Communicative of Error and Uncertainty
• Collaborative and Interdisciplinary
• Skeptical of Its Findings and Assumptions
• Structured for Falsifiability of Hypotheses
• Subject to Unbiased Peer Review
• Accepting of Negative Results as PositiveOutcomes
• Without Conflicts of Interest

You can read the plan: LEADING IN GOLD STANDARD SCIENCE: An NIH Implementation Plan at:

https://www.nih.gov/sites/default/files/2025-08/2025-gss.pdf 

The NIH Director Statement Advancing NIH’s Mission Through a Unified Strategy outlines a strategy to promote new priorities outlined in the executive order on Gold Standard Science and the Making America Healthy Again Commission Report. These priorities include:

• Training future biomedical scientists
• The development of a new "Real World Data Platform"
• Artificial Intelligence
• Nutrition
• Autism
• Reducing reliance on animal testing models
• Shifting to solution-oriented approaches in health disparities research
• Ensuring evidence-based health care for children and teenagers identifying as transgender
• HIV/AIDS
• Among others

NIH grants already awarded are subject to review in a response to another executive order on Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking, which directs all funding agency heads to review their current awards and identify those that are eligible for termination "for convenience" including the provisions that an award may be terminated by the agency “if an award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities”.