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The Texas Research Institute of Mental Sciences was founded as a Baylor College of Medicine project in 1955 and funded by the state legislature in 1957 as the Houston State Psychiatric Institute for Research and Training. It was under the administrative management of the Board for Texas Hospitals and Special Schools, with the requirement that it act as the research and training branch of the state mental health and intellectual disability service system. TRIMS originally occupied a mansion on Baldwin Street, borrowed from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (then M.D. Anderson Hospital); the research laboratories were in the carriage house. (Side note: Was this the Baker Estate?) It moved into its own building in 1961. That building, recognizable for its Midcentury design that featured series of arches in its roofline and glass exterior tile, was demolished in 2010 and the Institute moved into the Behavioral and Biomedical Sciences Building near Old Spanish Trail and Cambridge Street. The hospital branch was relocated to a nearby building in 1968 but the 1961 building continued to house the offices and library. The TRIMS name was adopted in 1967. A 1985 scandal relating to the validity of research data prompted a reorganization and transfer to the UT Health Science Center, during which it was renamed the University of Texas Mental Sciences Institute. The service role of the UTMSI has decreased since the 1980s but it continues to perform research and provide training in a wide variety of disciplines.

Robert Alonzo Welch was born in South Carolina and came to Houston around 1886. He started working for the Bute Paint Company (1867-1990) in 1891 as a bookkeeper and resigned in 1927 as secretary-treasurer but remained on it Board of Directors. In the early 1900s, he began investing in oil. When he died in 1952, 15% of his $25 million estate was divided among his 29 employees and the rest was used to establish the Robert A. Welch Foundation in 1954. The Welch Foundation is still a major source of funding for chemistry research in Texas.

The National Heart and Blood Vessel Research and Demonstration Center was established January 1, 1975, at Baylor College of Medicine, by the National Heart and Lung Institute, National Institutes of Health. The Center existed from 1975 through 1982, and research conducted at the Center resulted in nearly 800 publications.

The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research was opened by William Spencer, MD, as the Southwestern Poliomyelitis Respiratory Center in 1951 at the peak of the US polio epidemic. It officially became The Texas Institute for Rehabilitation and Research in 1959, then just The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research in 1978. After the development of a vaccine in the early 1960s, Dr. Spencer shifted the practice to the rehabilitation of the catastrophically injured. As it expanded, the Institute recruited doctors who would become major contributors in specific areas of concern, such as Gunyon Harrison (pediatric cystic fibrosis), Carlos Vallbona (physiology and cardiology), Paul Harrington (orthopedic surgeon and developer of Harrington rods); and Bobby Alford (ENT). TIRR is affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine and the McGovern Medical School, and joined Memorial Hermann in 2006.

The Children’s Nutrition Research Center was created in 1978 as a joint venture among Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s Hospital, and the USDA Agricultural Research Service. It is one of six USDA nutritional research centers. The CNRC’s areas of study are nutritional metabolism in mothers, infants, and children; childhood obesity prevention; pediatric clinical nutrition; molecular, cellular, and regulatory aspects of nutrition during development; and developmental determinants of obesity in infants and children.

Dr. Mavis Kelsey, founder and senior partner of the Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, P.A. of Houston, became acquainted with Dr. William Seybold first at UTMB and then more closely when both were working at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Kelsey, Seybold, and Dr. William Leary discussed the idea of establishing a group practice.
Kelsey moved to Houston in 1949 and started a practice at the Hermann Professional Building. Seybold followed in 1950 and Leary in 1951. The Kelsey-Seybold-Leary Clinic first resided on the fourteenth and eighth floors of the Hermann Professional Building.
Other members of the Kelsey-Leary Clinic were Dr. John R. Kelsey, Jr., Dr. Mavis Kelsey's brother, and Dr. Albert O. Owens, psychiatrist from the Menninger Clinic. Dr. Seybold left the group in 1952 but returned in 1961, serving as Chief of the General and Thoracic Surgery Department. The physicians continued to practice together as the Kelsey-Leary-Seybold Clinic up until 1965, when Dr. Leary left to join the M.D. Anderson Hospital Staff. The Clinic was renamed the KelseySeybold Clinic.
Through the years the Clinic has changed its location, expanded its services, established satellite clinics, operated branches through the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, headed programs for the armed services and has opened the innovative Fitness Center.
In May of 1979, the partnership was converted to a Professional Association. The Kelsey-Seybold, P.A., also organized by the physician staff of the clinic were the Clinic Drugs, Inc., Kelsey-Seybold Leasehold, Medical Equipment Co., Inc. and Professional Supply Company, Inc.
The Kelsey-Seybold Foundation is a chartered, charitable foundation. The Foundation fosters the advancement of medicine by sponsoring medical research and education, especially cancer research and childcare.
The Kelsey-Seybold Clinic provides a diversity of services ranging from specialized, in depth treatment, comprehensive fitness health maintenance programs and the promotion of scientific research.

The Texas Hadassah Medical Research Foundation was part of Baylor College of Medicine during the late-1990s and early 2000s. The organization, led in part by Dr. Armin Weinberg, provided medical supplies, cross-cultural collaboration and professional exchanges with Israel, Palestine, Kazakhstan, Russia, and other nations. An important part of its work dealt with radiation effects and events, like Chernobyl and atomic test sites in Kazakhstan. The organization developed the Cancer Registry of survivors of radiation events.

The Health Museum started out as a series of health exhibits proposed in the wake of the 1962 “Victory Over Polio” mass-immunization campaign. The exhibits opened in 1969 within the Museum of Natural Science. The Museum of Health and Medical Science reopened in 1996 in its own building and was renamed the John P. McGovern Museum of Health and Medical Science in 2001 following a bequest from the McGovern Foundation. The Museum has expanded several times and now features a 4D theater (2008) and the DeBakey Cell Lab, the first bilingual science laboratory museum in the US. In 2017 it became the first Smithsonian affiliate in the Houston Museum District.