NIH Leader Temporarily Heads CDC Operations

Source: CNN

Reported by: Ntiamoah Bernice Mantebea

February 19, 2026.

The director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, is stepping up to temporarily lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as acting director. An administration official shared this update with CNN on Wednesday.

Bhattacharya will keep his job as NIH head and also run the CDC until President Donald Trump names a permanent leader. That CDC role requires Senate approval.

Bhattacharya is taking over from HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill. O’Neill had been acting CDC director since last August. This came after US Health and Human Services Director Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. removed Dr. Susan Monarez. She had clashed with him on vaccine policy and wouldn't fire top agency leaders. Monarez lasted less than a month.

O’Neill stepped down last Friday amid a bigger agency shake-up. He stirred controversy at the CDC. He amplified anti-vaccine messages and celebrated the US exit from the World Health Organization. He was also considered a poor communicator.

Before joining the Trump team, Bhattacharya was a health economist and professor at Stanford University Medical School. He's most famous for co-writing the Great Barrington Declaration. It was an open letter from two months before Covid-19 vaccines hit. The letter pushed back against some pandemic restrictions.

The Declaration, named after the Massachusetts town where they signed it, faced heavy criticism from doctors and scientists. It suggested shielding the most vulnerable while letting others live normally to build herd immunity through infection. Back then, the World Health Organization's director-general called letting a deadly virus rip through unprotected groups "unethical." Bhattacharya later told Congress that he and the idea got hit with suppression and censorship from top science agencies.

As NIH director, Bhattacharya has faced resistance from hundreds of staffers. Last April, hundreds, including key leaders, got cut from federal agencies like NIH. In June, over 300 NIH employees released the Bethesda Declaration (named for NIH's location). They blasted what they saw as politicized research and wrecked scientific progress under Trump.

The administration proposed slashing the NIH budget by 40%. Thousands of grants have been axed in the year and a half since Trump took office.

As a leader of the NIH, Bhattacharya has talked a lot about rebuilding Americans' trust in how the federal government handles health and science.