Stanford University-trained physician and economist Jai Bhattacharya has reportedly emerged as the likely favorite of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team for the post of the next director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nearly US$50 billion agency. Is. Oversees the country’s biomedical research.
The Stanford-trained physician and economist met this week with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — whom Mr. Trump has appointed to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — the United States’ top health agency that oversees the NIH. and other health agencies, the Washington Post reported, citing three people.
According to the report, Dr. Bhattacharya impressed Kennedy with his ideas for overhauling NIH by shifting the agency’s focus toward funding more innovative research. He also reportedly recommended reducing the influence of some of his longest-serving officials, among other considerations. NIH awards grants funding to researchers, oversees clinical trials at its Maryland campus, and supports a variety of efforts to develop drugs and therapeutics.
Mr Trump’s transition team has not yet made any official statement regarding the reported developments. The decision about who will lead the NIH will not be final until the president-elect himself announces it, as Mr. Trump is known for sometimes rejecting the recommendations of his advisers. Reportedly, the President-elect’s transition team has also considered other candidates to lead the NIA.
Who is Jai Bhattacharya?
Born in 1968 in Kolkata, India, Jayant “Jai” Bhattacharya is a professor of health policy at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has an MD and PhD in economics – both earned from Stanford University – and also directs Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging.
According to Stanford’s official website, Dr. Bhattacharya’s research focuses on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, with a particular emphasis on the role of government programs, biomedical innovation, and economics. His recent research focuses on the epidemiology of COVID-19 as well as evaluating policy responses to the pandemic.
The economist’s broad research interests include the implications of population aging for future population health and medical spending in developed countries, the measurement of physician performance linked to physician payments by insurers, and the role played by biomedical innovation on health. He has published 135 articles in top peer-reviewed scientific journals in fields including medicine, economics, health policy, epidemiology, statistics, law, and public health, among others.
Dr. Bhattacharya was a leading critic of the federal government’s COVID-19 response, co-authoring an October 2020 open letter known as the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for “focused There were calls to roll back coronavirus-related shutdowns while maintaining “safety”. Old American. At the time, the proposal won support from Republican politicians and some Americans eager to resume daily life, but World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus criticized it as unethical and impractical.
