United President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Jay Bhattacharya as the Director of the National Institutes of Health.
Bhattacharya, an economist from Kolkata with medical studies at Stanford University, was a critic of US COVID policy. He will now lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the primary US public funder of medical research, overseeing a budget of $47.3 billion.
The NIH has faced scrutiny from Robert F Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH.
The NIH director manages 27 institutes and centers focused on early-stage research, from emerging pandemic vaccines to new drug targets.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bhattacharya along with two other academics published the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020. The declaration called for a return to normal life for those not vulnerable to the virus.
Bhattacharya later sued the government, claiming it pressured social media platforms to censor his opinions. He graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine in 1997 and earned his doctorate in economics from Stanford in 2000.
A research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Bhattacharya also directs Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging.
His research focuses on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, examining the role of government programs, biomedical innovation and economics.
Jay Bhattacharya’ recent work includes studying the epidemiology of Covid-19 and evaluating policy responses to the pandemic. Moreover, his broader interests include the impact of population aging on health and medical spending, the measurement of physician performance linked to payment systems and the influence of biomedical innovation on health, according to Stanford University.
On November 14, Donald Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the next United States Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).
With Reuters, ANI inputs
