Trump announces more leaders for HHS, NIH

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President-elect Donald Trump has added two members to the team of health care leaders of his incoming administration.

The president elect announce Jim O’Neill is nominated to serve as deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). A previous principal associate deputy secretary of HHS, will work with HHS Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to oversee operations and improve management, transparency and accountability.

Jim O'Neill
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While at HHS, O’Neill led reforms at the Food and Drug Administration to overhaul food safety regulations, according to the official biography published by the Trump transition team. He “implemented the FDA Amendments Act, which improved drug and medical device safety, and ensured greater protection for public health,” the bio said.

O’Neill also helped launch the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response to improve HHS response to emergencies and disasters. After his HHS tenure, O’Neill served as a managing director of Clarium Capital investment fund and CEO of the Thiel Foundation. He was CEO of the SENS Research Foundation, leading efforts to research and develop regenerative medicine solutions for age-related diseases, according to his official bio.

“Jim and RFK Jr. will fight in unison to ensure every American, and especially our most precious resource, our children, will live long and health lives, and Make America Great and Healthy Again!” Trump’s announcement said.

O’Neill would succeed HHS Deputy Secretary Andrea Palm, who acts as chief operating officer overseeing the daily operations of the department.

NIH director

The president-elect announced Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, would lead the National Institutes of Health. Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford University. He holds courtesy appointments as professor of economics and in health research and policy, and is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, and is a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy and at the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute.

Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD
_{© Stanford University}

On the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, Bhattacharya said he was honored and humbled by Trump’s nomination.

“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 said.

News reports stated Bhattacharya was a critic of lockdowns ordered during the COVID-19 pandemic. His biography posted by Trump noted Bhattacharya is co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, an alternative to the lockdowns proposed in October 2020.

“Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health,” said the declaration, co-authored by Martin Kulldorff, PhD, and Sunetra Gupta, PhD. “The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.”

The president-elect said Bhattacharya will work with Kennedy to “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.”

“Together, they will work hard to Make America Healthy Again!” Trump said on X.

Kennedy also used the social media platform to say: “Bhattacharya is the ideal leader to restore NIH as the international template for gold standard science and evidence based medicine.” Kulldorff praised Bhattacharya’s opportunity for NIH leadership and noted former NIH Director Francis Collins called Bhattacharya a “fringe epidemiologist” for the 2020 declaration. “Truth prevails!” Kulldorf said.

Bhattacharya would follow Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, an oncologist and surgeon, who in November 2023 became the 17th director of NIH. She is the first surgeon and second woman to hold the position.

NIH has 27 different institutes and centers with specific research agendas, often focusing on particular diseases or body systems. All but three receive research money directly from Congress and administer their own budgets, according to NIH’s official website.