Trump completes health team with Jay Bhattacharya as NIH pick

President-elect Trump completed his health team by picking Stanford University professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as his next director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

Trump, in the Tuesday announcement on TruthSocial, said that Bhattacharya will work alongside environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who he tapped earlier this month to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to “direct the Nation’s Medical Research, and to make important discoveries that will improve Health, and save lives.”

NIH has a budget of over $47 billion and oversees clinical trials, backs efforts to develop drugs and provides grants to researchers among other functions. Bhattacharya would need to be confirmed by the Senate. Republicans will be in the majority come next year. 

“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. 

Bhattacharya was one of the three authors of the “Great Barrington Declaration,” an open letter that was co-signed by over 40 medical and public health practitioners that opposed lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. and that the country could get to herd immunity even before the vaccine was developed. 

Bhattacharya has four degrees, including a medical degree from Stanford University. 

By tapping Bhattacharya to head the NIH, Trump has rounded all of the top health positions. Previously, the president-elect selected Martin Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Mehmed Oz for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Janette Nesheiwat as Surgeon General and former Rep. David Weldon to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Following the Tuesday night announcement, Bhattacharya said he was “honored and humbled” to get the nod. 

“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 wrote Tuesday on X.