WASHINGTON — The director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, will take on the additional role of acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two administration officials said Wednesday.
Bhattacharya will continue to run the NIH, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity to speak about personnel decisions before President Donald Trump announces them. He will serve until Trump appoints a permanent director — a position that now requires confirmation by the Senate.
The CDC has run through a series of leaders since Trump returned to the White House last year.
A physician and medical economist who left Stanford University to join the Trump administration, Bhattacharya has no formal training in public health. But his research has focused on the well-being of populations, which is the core mission of public health, and thus the CDC.
But public health experts, including former CDC officials, say it will be nearly impossible for Bhattacharya to run both the nation’s biomedical research agency and its public health agency. The CDC has been hobbled by funding cuts, firings and resignations; many of its career leaders are gone.
Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, called the arrangement “a recipe for disaster.” Given the deep cuts at the CDC, he said, “I think the CDC is one disaster away from being a disaster itself.”
At the very least, it will be a geographic challenge. The NIH is in Bethesda, Maryland, and the CDC is in Atlanta.
“Both agencies are fundamentally important in the U.S., and you need someone at CDC who can be dedicated to ensuring we are safe from outbreaks and other health threats,” said Dr. Debra Houry, a former CDC chief medical officer who left the agency in August.
She added, “CDC and NIH may collaborate on different programs, but they have a fundamentally different approach, with CDC being boots-on-the-ground and prevention-focused.”
Bhattacharya will replace Jim O’Neill, who had been serving as deputy health secretary until he left the Department of Health and Human Services last Friday. O’Neill will be nominated by Trump to lead the National Science Foundation, the officials said. He had been the acting CDC director since August, when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ousted the CDC’s Senate-confirmed director, Susan Monarez, after she had spent less than a month in the position.
The temporary appointment of Bhattacharya comes amid a leadership shake-up at the health department initiated by Kennedy and the White House. The effort is partly in anticipation of health policy being front and center in this year’s midterm elections.
Bhattacharya drew the spotlight during the coronavirus pandemic as an author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated an end to COVID lockdowns in favor of letting the virus spread among young healthy people while government resources were directed toward the elderly and vulnerable.
The declaration drew criticism from public health leaders and scientists, who said it was a dangerous approach. Dr. Francis Collins, the former NIH director, called Bhattacharya and his co-authors “fringe epidemiologists,” fueling anger among conservatives, who embraced Bhattacharya.
Monarez told Congress she was fired because she refused Kennedy’s demands to fire top officials and sign off on new vaccine recommendations put forth by his hand-picked advisers, without seeing underlying science and regardless of whether she agreed with them. Kennedy said he got rid of Monarez because she answered “no” when he asked if she was a “trustworthy person.”
Of the agencies under Kennedy’s purview, he seems to be particularly frustrated with the CDC. He has promised to tear down and remake it, describing it as “the most corrupt federal agency in the world.”
Monarez said that during tense conversations she had with Kennedy, he accused the CDC of “killing children.”
The CDC has around 25 centers, institutes and offices covering everything from laboratory science to chronic disease, birth defects and injury prevention. The Trump administration moved quickly to shutter many of them and to reassign their functions to a new “Administration for a Healthy America.”
Hundreds of researchers studying a range of issues from smoking to violence prevention have been let go. Three high-ranking leaders — Houry, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis and Dr. Daniel Jernigan — resigned en masse the day after Monarez was forced out.
Kennedy has managed to install leaders he trusts in other agencies under his purview: Dr. Marty Makary at the Food and Drug Administration, Bhattacharya at the NIH and Dr. Mehmet Oz at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The CDC has been an outlier. Kennedy’s first pick for director, Dr. Dave Weldon, a former Republican Congress member who pushed for vaccine policy changes in the 2000s, was unable to garner enough Republican support to get confirmed, and the White House withdrew his nomination just hours before his Senate confirmation hearing.
Trump then nominated Monarez, who had served as acting director while Weldon was awaiting the hearing. She was confirmed last July and pushed out less than a month later.
During her brief tenure, she dealt with tragedy. Last August, a gunman, fixated on the COVID vaccine, opened fire on the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters, killing a police officer and terrifying employees. The gunman was found dead at the scene.
In the run-up to the midterm elections, Kennedy is pivoting away from his vaccine agenda and toward more popular issues like healthy eating. O’Neill’s departure was among a number of personnel changes the White House and Kennedy made last week.
They included the elevation of Chris Klomp, a top official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to be Kennedy’s chief of staff, overseeing all operations. Klomp has been deeply involved in efforts to lower drug prices, a major priority for Trump.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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