I am thrilled to nominate Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, to serve as Director of the National Institutes of Health. 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.
Bhattacharya met with Kennedy Jr. this week and impressed him with his ideas to overhaul the NIH, which oversees U.S. biomedical research, awards funding grants to hundreds of thousands of researchers, and supports the development of drugs and therapeutics.
As the nominee for the NIH director, Bhattacharya must be confirmed by the Senate, which will have a Republican majority beginning in January. Bhattacharya has called for shifting the NIH’s focus towards funding more innovative research and reducing the influence of some of its longest-serving officials.
Kennedy Jr. has played a significant role in selecting top health care staff for Trump’s next administration, including Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary, who was chosen to lead the Food and Drug Administration, and internal medicine physician and former Republican congressman from Florida Dave Weldon, who was selected to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Bhattacharya and Makary worked together on a blueprint for a proposed commission to investigate the nation’s coronavirus response. The nominee for the NIH director must be confirmed by the Senate, which will have a Republican majority starting in January.
Bhattacharya has been a prominent critic of the federal government’s COVID-19 response, and co-wrote an open letter calling for the government to roll back pandemic shutdowns but maintain “focused protections” for vulnerable populations, such as the elderly. Public health experts, including then-NIH Director Francis S. Collins, criticized the proposal as premature and dangerous amid the spread of COVID-19.