The physician is a professor of health policy at Stanford University.
President-elect Donald Trump chose Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University health policy professor, to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Nov. 26.
“I am absolutely thrilled and humbled by the nomination. It’s time to reform American science to make America healthy again,” Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times.
Bhattacharya’s nomination follows that of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s choice for secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency that oversees the NIH. Both men face Senate confirmation hearings before either can assume office.
“Dr. Bhattacharya will work in cooperation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to direct the nation’s medical research, and to make important discoveries that will improve health, and save lives,” Trump said in a statement.
The NIH oversees 27 institutes and centers, including the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), whose previous director was Dr. Anthony Fauci. As a federal agency, the NIH is the largest funder of biomedical and behavioral research worldwide, with a budget of $47.3 billion in fiscal year 2024.
Almost 83 percent of NIH funding consists of nearly 50,000 competitive grants to more than 300,000 researchers across thousands of universities, medical schools, and various research institutions in all 50 states. The NIH also uses 11 percent of its budget to support roughly 6,000 scientists at its laboratories in Bethesda, Maryland.
Currently serving as the 17th NIH director is Dr. Monica Bertagnolli. Nominated by President Joe Biden in 2023, Bertagnolli is an expert in clinical oncology, including research into the genetic drivers of gastrointestinal cancer development and inflammation’s role in leading to cancer growth.
During his first administration, Trump retained Dr. Francis Collins, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009 to serve as the 16th NIH director. Collins retired as head of NIH in December 2021.
Bhattacharya, Trump’s nominee for the 18th NIH director, is known for speaking out against lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Along with Harvard University’s Martin Kulldorff and Oxford University’s Sunetra Gupta, Bhattacharya co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which detailed the authors’ concerns of “damaging physical and mental health impacts” from extended public lockdowns in 2020.
By Jacob Burg
