President-elect Trump has finished choosing top health leaders for his next administration after nominating Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) late Tuesday night.
Trump announced his pick in a post on his social media platform Truth Social, writing Bhattacharya would work in coordination with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “direct the Nation’s Medical Research, and to make important discoveries that will improve the Health, and save lives.”
Kennedy has been tapped to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH.
Bhattacharya is a Stanford-educated physician and economist who was critical of the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
He was one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter written in 2020 calling for rollbacks to COVID-19 lockdowns.
The nomination still needs Senate approval before it is finalized. But if confirmed, Bhattacharya will head an agency with a $47 billion budget and that oversees clinical trials, efforts to develop drugs and issues research grants, among other tasks.
“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 added in his post to Truth Social.
