NIH rolls out redesigned website to streamline health information

Trying to find something on the old website required the skills of an Egyptologist, according to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor of communication and former director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The National Institutes of Health is rolling out a redesigned website that consolidates its sprawling digital footprint from more than 700 separate websites into eight thematic hubs focused on health, research, data, clinical studies, rare diseases, technology, cancer, and grants.

Website Redesign Shifts National Institutes of Health Digital Focus

The agency soft-launched a beta version of the streamlined platform. Amanda Fine, NIH deputy director for public affairs, stated that the goal is to make trusted NIH information across the agency easier and faster to find. The overhaul shifts attention away from individual institutes and centers and toward centralized thematic hubs designed to match the types of information users seek out most often. During the transition, existing websites will remain available until critical and mandated content is verified and redirects are established.

Pandemic Disruption Exposed Sprawling Digital Footprint

Over the past few decades, the digital footprint of the National Institutes of Health expanded to more than 700 separate websites with disconnected backend architectures spanning millions of webpages, often duplicating information across multiple locations. Hall Jamieson noted that the setup became a dramatic illustration of a dysfunctional website whose dysfunction wasn’t evident pre-Covid, as the public turned to federal science agencies for fast-moving guidance during the coronavirus pandemic.

Federal Workforce Reductions Alter Consolidation Timeline

Following the pandemic, the National Institutes of Health initiated its first-ever five-year strategic communications plan in 2022 under President Biden, utilizing working groups of more than 70 communications staffers across 27 institutes and centers to streamline the network down to one site per institute. However, this plan was scrapped when the Trump administration dismissed hundreds of communications staffers as part of government-wide workforce reductions in early 2025. Those layoffs and mass contract cancellations left millions of National Institutes of Health websites frozen for nearly 18 months, creating urgency for the remaining dozen or so communications employees tasked with advancing the consolidation under the new administration.

Rolling Out Eight Thematic Hubs for Public Health Data

Fine explained that her team used a data-driven process to evaluate how visitors moved through the site, identifying frequent bottlenecks and the most heavily accessed information. The content on the new platform is drawn directly from existing agency health information. While some functions, including search capabilities, remained non-operational during the initial beta soft launch, agency officials indicated the site will continue evolving in the coming months as older websites are sunset on a rolling basis.