NIH’s Bhattacharya will also run the CDC while Trump administration looks for a permanent director
WASHINGTON– National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya will also temporarily become acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an administration official said Wednesday.
The change was first reported by The New York Times and confirmed by the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the appointment had not been made public.
Bhattacharya will be the third leader of the CDC, the nation’s top public health agency, during President Donald Trump’s second term. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abruptly fired then-CDC director Susan Monarez last summer, less than a month after the Senate confirmed her for the job.
Monarez, a longtime government scientist, later testified before a Senate committee that her firing came after she refused to approve Kennedy-requested changes to the childhood immunization schedule without data to support them.
Deputy Health Secretary Jim O’Neill, a former investor, served as acting CDC director and oversaw these vaccine changes before his departure announced last week.
Bhattacharya is a health economist who, as a professor at Stanford University, has been an outspoken critic of government shutdowns and vaccine policies related to COVID-19. At NIH, he oversees the largest public funder of biomedical research.
At a recent Senate hearing, Bhattacharya said vaccinating children against measles was “the best way to combat the measles epidemic in this country,” and said he had seen no evidence linking a single vaccine to autism.
Trump administration officials have said they plan to find a permanent CDC director, a position that requires Senate confirmation.
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