U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
What is the NIH HEAL Initiative?
The Helping to End Addiction Long-term® Initiative, or NIH HEAL Initiative®, is an aggressive, trans-agency effort to speed scientific solutions to stem the national opioid public health crisis. Almost every NIH Institute and Center is accelerating research to address this public health emergency from all angles.
The initiative is funding hundreds of projects nationwide. Researchers are taking a variety of approaches to tackle the opioid epidemic through:
- Understanding, managing, and treating pain
- Improving prevention and treatment for opioid misuse and addiction
Featured News
Celebrating Excellence: The Inaugural HEAL Director's Awards
This month's Director's Message introduces the winners of the 2023 HEAL Director's Awards. The awards recognize those researchers who are advancing HEAL's mission in research excellence, interdisciplinary science, mentoring, and community partnerships as well as scientists in the early to middle stages of their careers who are breaking ground and expanding research in new directions.
Read the Director’s MessageLatest Research Spotlight
Helping the Body Heal Itself: Injected Stem Cells for Back Pain
HEAL researchers are creating new tools in the toolbox in the quest to help patients with back pain. Learn about "microgels."
Read the SpotlightNIH HEAL Initiative 2023 Annual Report
Now in its fourth year of funding, the NIH Helping to End Addiction Long-term® Initiative, or NIH HEAL Initiative®, continues to seek urgent answers to the nation’s evolving pain and opioid crises.
View Annual Report pageResearch Priorities
In 2018, NIH, in consultation with a broad range of stakeholders, identified a set of research priorities reflecting urgent unmet needs across the lifespan, areas of promising scientific opportunity, and concrete strategies capable of providing rapid and durable solutions to the opioid crisis.
Through evidence-based scientific research, the NIH HEAL Initiative will provide lasting, scientific solutions to the opioid crisis.
Learn more about the initiative's research prioritiesExplore Funding for Your Research
Through the initiative, NIH supports research to enhance pain management and to prevent and improve treatment for opioid misuse and addiction. The initiative funds work in research focus areas led by most NIH ICs supporting hundreds of projects, from basic science to implementation research.
See Open HEAL Funding Opportunities