Jay Bhattacharya
Jayanta Bhattacharya (born 1968) is an American health economist and physician who has served as the 18th director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 2025. Additionally, he has served as the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) since February 2026. Bhattacharya holds the distinction of being the first Indian American to lead the NIH.
Bhattacharya earned both his M.D. and Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. While he does not practice medicine, his professional expertise is centered on health economics. He served as a professor of medicine, economics, and health research policy at Stanford University until March 2025, when he transitioned to an emeritus position to assume his leadership role at the National Institutes of Health.
Before his appointment to the NIH, Bhattacharya was an investigator at Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. His research during this period focused specifically on the economics of healthcare systems.
Bhattacharya is noted for his specific stances regarding public health policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, where he opposed the implementation of lockdowns and mask mandates in 2020. In collaboration with Martin Kulldorff and Sunetra Gupta, he was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020. This declaration advocated for lifting COVID-19 restrictions on lower-risk groups to facilitate the development of herd immunity through widespread infection, while promoting the notion that vulnerable individuals could be protected simultaneously.
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