National Institutes of Health Common Fund
| Funding program overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 2004 |
| Jurisdiction | Federal government of the United States |
| Headquarters | NIH campus, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S. |
| Annual budget | US$533 million (FY 2014) |
| Parent department | National Institutes of Health |
| Website | commonfund |
The National Institutes of Health Common Fund (NIH Common Fund) is a centrally managed funding program of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that supports short-term, cross-cutting biomedical and behavioral research initiatives involving more than one of NIH's institutes and centers. It originated in the early-2000s NIH Roadmap for Medical Research and was given a dedicated appropriation and statutory authority in the NIH Reform Act of 2006.
Common Fund programs are intended to be time-limited, goal-directed investments that create research tools, data resources, methods, or organizational models which, once established, can be sustained by individual NIH institutes and centers. Commentators have described the Common Fund as an alternative funding mechanism that promotes "convergence" across scientific disciplines while accounting for only a small fraction of the overall NIH budget.