About the National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Program

The National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Program has been organizing major conferences since 1977. Under this program, NIH holds conferences that produce consensus statements on important and controversial topics in medicine. Each conference is jointly sponsored and administered by one or more Institute, Center, or Office of the NIH and by the NIH Office of Disease Prevention. The goal of a Consensus Development Conference is to evaluate the available scientific information and develop a statement that advances understanding of the issue in question and will be useful to health professionals and the public at large.