On June 10, Congress creates OBSSR to identify, coordinate, and promote behavioral and social sciences research projects at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and beyond. OBSSR’s founding demonstrates growing public acceptance that behavioral and social sciences greatly impact public health.

OBSSR officially opens its doors within the NIH Office of the Director. The Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Coordinating Committee forms the same year to advise the OBSSR Director and foster communication and coordination between NIH staff and external partners in the field of behavioral and social sciences research.

OBSSR issues a funding opportunity announcement in 1997, and again in 1998, for the development of short-term educational workshops for social, behavioral, and biomedical researchers in the early stages of their careers. Promoting interdisciplinary approaches, these workshops aim to help participants develop cross-disciplinary collaborations.

OBSSR issues funding opportunities, which are enacted in 1998 and 2003, to test whether theoretical models and practical interventions are effective for creating positive, long-term behavior changes. In particular, researchers study the leading causes of poor health and premature death: poor diet and exercise, alcohol use, and tobacco use.

OBSSR leads a funding opportunity to establish the Centers for Mind/Body Interactions and Health to encourage and advance interdisciplinary projects—each designed to focus on relationships between the mind and body in disease and health. Subsequent funding opportunities in this field are released in 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2007.

OBSSR and NIH advance intervention research to improve human health. OBSSR issues a funding opportunity soliciting behavioral intervention research focused on youth violence prevention.

"OBSSR has been the backbone of behavioral and social sciences research at NIH."

Peter Kaufmann becomes Acting Director of OBSSR after a decade as the Chief of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Behavioral Medicine Branch. Dr. Kaufmann encourages OBSSR staff to use their diverse subject backgrounds and abilities, enabling the team to concentrate on and strengthen aspects of behavioral and social sciences research at NIH.

In collaboration with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, OBSSR holds its first annual Summer Institute on Randomized Behavioral Clinical Trials. The institute trains researchers and health professionals on how to conduct studies that divide participants into groups by chance, allowing researchers to review different treatments or interventions fairly.

The National Research Council, in collaboration with OBSSR, publishes New Horizons in Health: An Integrative Approach. This consensus report details ways in which NIH can use behavioral and social sciences research to address contemporary health needs and outcomes on national and global scales.

OBSSR issues a funding opportunity announcement focused on developing and enhancing the quality and power of data in health-related behavioral and social sciences. Researchers are asked to explore how to improve methodologies in research design, measurement, and data synthesis. This project is reissued in 2005, 2006, 2008, 2016, and 2017.

OBSSR encourages the investigation of formal schooling’s impact on overall health by issuing a funding opportunity announcement. This leads OBSSR to a related meeting in 2014 called "Education and Health: New Frontiers" which included meeting minutes found in the 2015 NAS National Academy of Sciences report Exploring Opportunities for Collaboration Between Health and Education to Improve Population Health: Workshop Summary. OBSSR also issues related funding opportunities “Education and Health: New Frontiers” in 2016 and 2018.

OBSSR releases funding opportunities to stimulate research in health literacy—the capacity of individuals to understand and act on information to improve or sustain their health. These projects examine how health literacy connects to health disparities and how technology can bridge the knowledge gap. These funding opportunities are reissued in 2006, 2010, and 2013 and inform a 2011 Institute of Medicine report.

Community-based participatory research allows people with great stakes in a community’s health to work alongside scientific researchers to improve health and address related disparities. OBSSR issues a funding opportunity announcement in 2004, and again in 2008, to stimulate joint involvement of researchers and communities in conducting health research.

"We get a lot of applause for all the breakthroughs in biomedical research … we get some applause for the breakthroughs in psychosocial, epidemiology, and public health research …. If the one takes place without the other, it’s the sound of one hand clapping …. Imagine how much more applause we would get if both hands were clapping: on the one side the biomedical sciences, and on the other side collaborating with the behavioral and social sciences."

David Abrams becomes OBSSR’s Director after a long tenure as a professor of Community Health, Psychiatry, and Human Behavior at Brown University Medical School. Under his leadership, OBSSR publishes a strategic prospectus. Dr. Abrams prioritizes systems science—studying the world as a series of systems interacting with one another—and transdisciplinary team science. His efforts involve focusing on major chronic diseases that are not easily categorized into biomedical or psychosocial realms but rather result from interactions between them.

Dr. Abrams also encourages community-building efforts and provides spaces for staff to generate ideas about how to enhance the mission of the behavioral and social sciences within the NIH community. He establishes a “kitchen cabinet,” holding weekly meetings with behavioral and social sciences programming staff across the NIH to garner advice. The group builds a sense of camaraderie, discussing challenges OBSSR faces and ways to work together more effectively.

OBSSR creates an annual distinguished scholar lecture to honor Dr. Matilda White Riley, who pioneered the integration of behavioral and social sciences research into biomedicine. An academic sociologist, Dr. Riley also developed and directed grant programs on behavioral and social sciences research at the NIA National Institute on Aging . The event expands in 2016 to highlight early career scientists with the Early Stage Investigator Paper Awards.

In collaboration with OBSSR, the Institute of Medicine (later renamed the National Academy of Medicine) publishes Genes, Behavior, and the Social Environment: Moving Beyond the Nature/Nurture Debate. This report reviews work related to interactions between genes and environment, encouraging the examination of multiple public health factors at once. In 2008, OBSSR issues funding opportunities aimed at understanding the combined effect of biological and social factors on health.

OBSSR releases its strategic prospectus (second strategic plan), which provides recommendations within the field and for public health progress as a whole. The prospectus contains four priorities: (1) “next-generation” basic, or life, science; (2) research between and across different fields; (3) systems science, or the science of understanding life as a series of related systems; and (4) problem-focused research for population impact.

Rural, low-income, and certain racial and ethnic populations generally experience poorer health than the overall U.S. population. To stimulate research on the causes of and solutions to health and disability disparities in the United States, OBSSR issues a funding opportunity announcement focused on this topic. These projects were reissued in 2010 and 2013.

"OBSSR (is) … a uniter of NIH institutes around behavioral and social science issues, having a small budget … to nudge things along, to seed ideas, and having a voice."

Christine Bachrach becomes OBSSR’s Acting Director following a long tenure at the Demographic and Behavioral Science Branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Center for Population Research. Under Dr. Bachrach’s leadership, OBSSR organizes institute directors, program leaders, and working groups to create OppNet NIH Basic Behavioral and Social Science Opportunity Network , a fruitful interdisciplinary funding initiative launched in 2009.

In collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, OBSSR organizes its first Annual Institute on Systems Science and Health. The institute’s purpose is to provide students with an overview of systems science methods and training. Students represent a variety of disciplines and education levels—from predoctoral to full professor.

"There are still health disparities among various groups, racial, ethnic, geographic … figuring out how environment, broadly defined to include the social and behavioral environment, as well as the physical and chemical environments, influences gene expression, and health and disease outcomes … those issues are still on the table for NIH and for OBSSR."

Deborah Olster becomes OBSSR’s Acting Director after serving as Deputy Director of OBSSR and in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation. As Acting Director, Dr. Olster spearheads the interdisciplinary research activities and funding opportunities included in the NIH Roadmap.

"What I’ve come to appreciate is that the determinants of health are much broader than we’ve ever recognized. OBSSR has really developed that message."

Robert Kaplan becomes OBSSR’s Director after serving as a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Public Health and School of Medicine. During his tenure, OBSSR invests in the development of the mHealth Collaboratory, an initiative that employs mobile technologies to improve public health and prepares for next-generation technologies and research methods.

Under Dr. Kaplan’s leadership, OBSSR also spearheads a training program to help medical schools reform their curricula to bolster behavioral and social sciences content. Additionally, OBSSR holds many short courses to train early-career researchers and doctors in mHealth, dissemination and implementation methods, systems science, and more.

OBSSR issues a funding opportunity announcement in 2011, and again in 2014, to stimulate research related to positive behavioral interventions and health outcomes for patients with coexisting chronic health conditions and diseases. In particular, they support research in primary care treatment for patients with three or more chronic health conditions.

In collaboration with OBSSR, the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine publish the consensus report U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health. Conducted at OBSSR’s request, the study compares life expectancy and health in the United States with those of 16 other wealthy democratic countries. It finds that U.S. life expectancy and health do not compare well and require a societal commitment to improve.

"I cannot imagine a more exciting time than now to be a behavioral and social science researcher. Advances in technology, open data, and big data analytics are providing new and temporally dense information in large and varied samples. Transdisciplinary efforts by diverse disciplines, including genetics, neuroscience, computer science, and engineering, are reinvigorating the behavioral and social sciences with novel approaches and methodologies and are cross-pollinating behavioral and social sciences research approaches into their disciplines, as well."

William T. Riley becomes OBSSR’s Acting Director, and then Director, after serving for more than a decade at NIH in the National Institute of Mental Health; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; and the National Cancer Institute. He specializes in applying digital technologies, engineering, and computer science to the behavioral and social sciences to improve public health research and outcomes.

Under Dr. Riley’s leadership, OBSSR expands its training initiatives. In particular, the K18 award provides funding opportunities for established scientists to gain experience in disciplines beyond their primary research fields. OBSSR releases its third strategic plan, which expands on scientific priorities by providing a list of functions central to OBSSR’s mission and advancement.

Ever-changing technology plays a part in health management. OBSSR issues a funding opportunity announcement to help researchers effectively evaluate mobile and wireless (mHealth) technologies. The goal is to identify sustainable applications and spaces that can facilitate mHealth research across various settings, studies, health conditions, and populations. OBSSR releases a related funding opportunity announcement in 2017.

OBSSR leads funding opportunities focused on population health interventions to stimulate research on the ways different factors relate to each other and lead to health outcomes; these were issued in 2016 and reissued in 2018. These projects study how individual, provider, community, and environmental factors can link together to improve public health and treatment efficacy.

At the inaugural annual "NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Festival," OBSSR and the NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Coordinating Committee showcase noteworthy health research strides, innovations, and areas of interest. The event features presentations by NIH and external scientists hailing from various fields. The festival also serves to solidify research directions and coordination among various NIH Institutes and Centers.

OBSSR issues funding opportunity announcements to develop a cooperative agreement network and research coordinating center to support the Intensive Longitudinal Health Behaviors Initiative. The goal is to learn the influences of key health behaviors from data collection and analysis, assisted with real-time data from smartphones and new technologies, to suggest personalized strategies for disease reduction and prevention.

Social ties can facilitate overall well-being, recovery from acute illness, and self-management of chronic conditions. But the mechanisms, processes, and trajectories by which connection and isolation lead to positive or negative impacts on health, well-being, illness, or recovery are less well understood. To address this knowledge gap, OppNet NIH Basic Behavioral and Social Science Opportunity Network published funding opportunities in 2019 and again in 2021 to solicit research projects that seek to model the underlying mechanisms, processes, and trajectories of social relationships and how these factors affect outcomes in health, illness, recovery, and overall well-being.

In December 2020, OBSSR develops “A Communicator’s Tip Sheet for COVID-19 Vaccination.” This tip sheet has recommended do’s and don’ts for COVID-19 vaccination communication.

"Behavioral and social factors often play a pivotal role in the prevention or mitigation of risk for diseases, as well as in the management of chronic diseases and the promotion of well-being. The systematic integration of the behavioral and social sciences into the broad research mission at NIH, from fundamental discovery to implementation science, is crucial to achieving the goal of advancing human health."

Christine Hunter becomes the Acting Director for OBSSR. Her efforts focus on ontology studies, and she contributes to the development of OBSSR’s fourth strategic plan, published in 2024.

Dr. Hunter obtained her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Memphis and completed her psychology internship at Wilford Hall Medical Center. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in clinical health psychology and attained Board Certification in Clinical Health Psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology. Dr. Hunter also is a Captain in the U.S. Public Health Service.

"The leading causes of death among Americans have clear behavioral and social antecedents. Many deaths are preventable, if only we better implemented the effective public health outreach and behavioral health interventions we have developed. Certainly, we cannot fulfill NIH’s mission to improve health and lengthen life without coordinated support for rigorous and impactful behavioral and social sciences research across the NIH."

Jane M. Simoni, Ph.D., becomes the NIH Associate Director for Behavioral and Social Sciences Research and Director of the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research. Dr. Simoni earned her bachelor’s degree at Princeton University and her Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles. She also completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Southern California and Columbia University.