Nationwide Institutes of Well being (NIH) Director Monica Bertagnolli will resign on Jan. 17, she advised workers this week, ending her tenure as the pinnacle of the $48 billion biomedical analysis company after solely a yr.
“I am so proud of what NIH has been able to achieve in such a short time under my leadership,” Bertagnolli mentioned in her announcement, touting a listing of initiatives launched that she hopes the subsequent administration will proceed.
The NIH has sometimes been an company with bipartisan assist, and Bertagnolli’s predecessor, Francis Collins, served three administrations over greater than 12 years. However lingering Republican anger over the dealing with of the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed NIH squarely into partisan crosshairs.
The company confronted heavy criticism, which particularly focused leaders like Collins and Anthony Fauci, who led the Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Illnesses for 38 years.
Bertagnolli has spent a lot of the previous yr making an attempt to shore up assist amongst Home and Senate lawmakers who wish to implement dramatic modifications, together with shrinking the company from 27 separate institutes and facilities to fifteen.
Different proposals included a time period restrict for institute administrators with a most length of two phrases, including new oversight measures for grantees and including new restrictions on analysis grants that current nationwide safety dangers.
President-elect Trump has nominated his personal NIH director, Stanford College well being economist Jay Bhattacharya, who may spearhead a number of the main restructuring efforts Bertagnolli labored to move off.
Bhattacharya was one of many authors of an open letter known as “The Great Barrington Declaration,” which criticized COVID mandates and known as for “herd immunity.”
Trump’s well being group additionally contains Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because the nominee to guide NIH’s father or mother company, the Division of Well being and Human Companies.
Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic who additionally questions the security of fluoridated water, has known as for suspending infectious illness analysis at NIH in favor of specializing in continual illnesses as a part of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
Kennedy has additionally known as for the firing of a whole lot of NIH workers members, a process that will probably be tough with out congressional motion.
