Washington DC:
Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University-educated physician and economist, is reportedly the likely favorite of President Donald Trump’s newly-elected transition team to become the next director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency worth nearly $50 billion is. oversees the country’s biomedical research.
The Stanford-educated physician and economist met with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week. – who was appointed by Mr Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) – the United States’ primary health agency that oversees the NIH and other health agencies, the WashingtonPost reported citing three people.
According to the report, Dr. Bhattacharya impressed Kennedy with his ideas to overhaul the NIH by shifting the agency’s focus to funding more innovative research. He also reportedly recommended reducing the influence of some of the country’s longest-serving career officials, among other things. NIH awards funding grants to researchers, oversees clinical trials on its Maryland campus, and supports a variety of efforts to develop drugs and therapies.
Mr. Trump’s transition team has not yet made an official statement on the reported developments. The decision on who will lead the NIH will not be final until the president-elect himself announces it, as Trump is known to sometimes reject his advisors’ recommendations. The president-elect’s transition team has also reportedly looked at other candidates to head NIA.
Who is Jay Bhattacharya?
Born in Kolkata, India, in 1968, Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya is a professor of health policy at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research. He has an MD and PhD in economics, both 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 and an evaluation of policy responses to the epidemic.
The economist’s broader research interests include the implications of population aging for future public health and medical spending in developed countries, measuring physician performance linked to physician payment by insurers, and the role that biomedical innovation plays on the field of healthcare. He has published 135 articles in top peer-reviewed scientific journals in fields including medicine, economics, health policy, epidemiology, statistics, law and public health.
Dr. Bhattacharya has been a prominent critic of the federal government’s response to COVID-19 and co-wrote an October 2020 open letter known as the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for a rollback of coronavirus-related shutdowns while maintaining “targeted protection” for vulnerable populations, such as older Americans. At the time, the proposal had support from Republican politicians and some Americans eager to resume daily life, but it was criticized as unethical and unfeasible by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization.