Strategic Plans
NIA: NIA (overall) strategic plan
NIA Health Disparities: PDF Version

Below, is an excerpt from the plan.

NIA Director’s Message

In 1974, Congress granted authority to form the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to provide leadership in aging research, training, health information dissemination, and other programs relevant to aging and older people. Today, millions of Americans are leading healthier lives based, in part, on discoveries from aging research. But more must be done to redress disparities in health among U.S. minority groups. Since the beginning of the 20th century, life expectancy at birth in the U.S. has increased from less than 50 years to more than 76 years. Life expectancy at birth has more than doubled for African Americans (and “other races combined) since 1900, from 33 years to 69 years in 1991. For Caucasians, the increase was from 48 years to 76 years. The challenge for the 21st century will be to make these added years as healthy and productive as possible and to maintain the current trend of decline in disability across all segments of the population, minority and non- minority alike.

For the past six months, NIH has been developing a comprehensive Strategic Plan to Reduce and Ultimately Eliminate Health Disparities. The goal is for the Strategic Plan to be ready for submission as part of the NIH Fiscal Year 2002 budget request, as an outline of the NIH’s priorities and commitment to research on health disparities. The Plan sets forth the NIH objectives for reducing and eliminating health disparities over the next five years.

In similar fashion and over the same time course, development of the NIA Strategic Plan on Health Disparities was started with the goal of addressing health disparities in older Americans. The NIA plan, like the NIH plan, focuses on three major areas: 1) research; 2) research infrastructure; and 3) public information, outreach and education, and includes ongoing and future initiatives. The plan is composed of over sixty activities to help the NIA advance research on health disparities.

We are committed to fulfilling our own role in the battle against health disparities. We have the responsibility to place special emphasis on those diseases and conditions that are major contributors to health disparities among older individuals, with the goal of making measurable progress against these and other problems. The NIA Strategic Plan on Health Disparities, in union with the NIA Strategic Plan for Aging Research and the recently completed Review of Minority Aging Research by the National Advisory Council on Aging, presents a vision and approach to redress health disparities. I am pleased to present this first public presentation of the plan and welcome your comments on its content.

Richard Hodes, M.D.
Director, NIA