National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Indian American director Jay Bhattacharya has been named the acting director of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday.
This temporary appointment will be in addition to Bhattacharya’s role at NIH and follows the dismissal of Jim O’Neill the previous week, according to media reports. Instead, O’Neill is set to lead the National Science Foundation under the Trump administration, according to Politico.
The CDC has been going through leadership changes over the past year with the Trump administration’s restructuring while introducing new policies like Make America Healthy Again (MAHA).
One of the experts that spoke to The New York Times, which first broke the news of Bhattacharya’s new role, noted that running both the nation’s biomedical research agency and its public health agency is a “recipe for disaster.”
In April 2025, Bhattacharya had taken the role of NIH’s 18th director, nominated by President Donald Trump, to address America’s chronic disease crisis.
A renowned doctor, researcher and health economist, Kolkata-born Dr. Bhattacharya held a tenured professorship in the medical school at Stanford University in California. Dr. Bhattacharya’s research has focused on population aging and chronic disease, particularly on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations.
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Dr. Bhattacharya earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from Stanford University. He then completed medical school and earned a Ph.D. in economics at Stanford University.
O’Neill, who also served as deputy secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, was ousted by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as part of a sweeping internal restructuring. The shake-up elevated Chris Klomp, deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to chief counselor with oversight of department-wide operations.
“I do think CDC deserves a dedicated leader,” a CDC official told Politico under the condition of anonymity. “I am hopeful at least that [Bhattacharya] will be much more engaged than O’Neill ever was,” but noted that is “not a high bar.”