Institute of Health Resilience and Innovation (IHRI)
The Institute of Health Resilience and Innovation (IHRI) at Rice University exists to understand why some people thrive as they age while others struggle, and to use that understanding to help more people age successfully. Guided by a Cells to Society framework, IHRI brings together researchers, practitioners, and community partners to address the biological, psychological, social, and environmental factors that shape health across the lifespan. By integrating insights from the social, behavioral, computational, and biomedical sciences, the Institute develops strategies to strengthen resilience, reduce disparities in healthy aging, and improve outcomes for individuals and communities.
IHRI’s work is grounded in the recognition that too many people experience preventable decline with age, not simply because of biology, but because of chronic stress, adversity, relationship conditions, and structural inequities that become biologically embedded over time. Experiences across the life course, from early adversity to the quality of close relationships and neighborhood environments, shape physiological systems that influence aging and disease risk decades later. Through interdisciplinary research, IHRI examines how these forces shape trajectories of health, resilience, and aging from early life through older adulthood.
Based at Rice University and connected to partners across the Texas Medical Center and the Houston community, IHRI serves as a collaborative hub for interdisciplinary research, training, and translation. The Institute supports investigators through seed funding, grant development, and access to shared methodological and scientific resources. Its Transdisciplinary Research Core integrates molecular, neurobiological, behavioral, and social science approaches to complex health challenges by supporting biomarker and neurobiological assessment, clinical collaboration, and community-engaged research. Its Career and Grant Development Core helps researchers at all career stages build strong, fundable programs through mentorship, grant writing workshops, targeted support for NIH career development awards, and pilot funding that generates preliminary data for larger external grants.
A central pillar of IHRI’s research strategy is THRIVE Houston (Trajectories of Health, Resilience, and Inequity in Varied Environments), a long-term research platform designed to understand how social relationships, neighborhood conditions, stress exposure, and structural inequities shape aging and health disparities across Houston. By integrating social exposome measures with biological indicators of aging, including inflammatory, immune, autonomic, and neurobiological processes, THRIVE Houston provides a shared infrastructure for studying how environments and life experiences influence health trajectories over time. In a city where life expectancy can differ dramatically across neighborhoods, THRIVE Houston positions Rice to generate actionable insight into why these disparities emerge and how they can be reduced. Because Houston reflects the demographic future of the United States, what IHRI learns locally has national relevance.
IHRI also advances public impact through community partnership and knowledge sharing. Its annual Community Health and Resilience Fair is a signature event that brings researchers, clinicians, and community organizations together to provide free screenings, educational resources, and services in historically underserved Houston neighborhoods. By pairing research with reciprocal community engagement, IHRI works to ensure that discovery leads to meaningful improvements in health and well-being. As life expectancies extend and populations age worldwide, IHRI is committed to making successful aging not a privilege for a few, but an attainable outcome for all.
Source: https://ihri.rice.edu/
Last updated: March 2026