(The Center Square) – President-elect Donald Trump nominated health economist Jay Bhattacharya to serve as the next director of the National Institutes of Health, a federal agency that spends most of its nearly $48 billion budget on medical research through competitive grants
Bhattacharya is a physician and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine and will work under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
“I am honored and humbled by President Trump’s nomination of me to be the next NIH director,” Bhattacharya said on X. “We will reform American scientific institutions so that they are worthy of trust again and will deploy the fruits of excellent science to make America healthy again!”
Bhattacharya was a noted critic of COVID-19 lockdown measures and a vocal critic of Dr. Anthony Fauci and his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. He co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, written from a global public health and humanitarian perspective, advocating for herd immunity-based COVID-19 strategies.
“Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will restore the NIH to a Gold Standard of Medical Research as they examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease,” Trump said in a statement.
Bhattacharya is the first Indian-American to be nominated for a top administration position. Trump’s duel pick of Indian-American Vivek Ramaswamy (and Tesla owner Elon Musk) to run the newly created Department of Government Efficiency aren’t government officials and don’t need Senate confirmation.
The National Institutes of Health spends nearly all of its $48 billion budget on medical research for the American people through research, which consists of nearly 50,000 competitive grants and more than 300,000 researchers across 2,500 universities, medical schools and other research institutions nationwide.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted his gratitude over the nominations on X, echoing president-elect Trump and calling Bhattacharya “the ideal leader to restore NIH as the international template for gold-standard science and evidence-based medicine.”
“I am interested in how Dr. Bhattacharya sees using his background as a health economist to guide the NIH. I look forward to our meeting,” U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-LA, a doctor, wrote on X.