On the first day of Jay Bhattacharya's leadership at the NIH, four institute directors were placed on administrative leave, igniting concerns about research funding and agency stability. This unprecedented decision, coinciding with major budgets cuts at the NIH, impacts directors managing $9 billion in funding. The HHS aims to reassign these individuals to the Indian Health Service, indicating a strategic shift in focus towards underserved communities. Such reassignments are rarely seen at the NIH, raising questions about the effects on ongoing health research and veteran leadership within the organization.
At least some directors were offered reassignments to the Indian Health Service, a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that provides medical care to Indigenous people living in the United States.
These large-scale reassignments are unheard of for the NIH, the world's largest public funder of biomedical research: although the director of the NIH and the director of one of its institutes, the National Cancer Institute, are political appointees chosen by the US president, the other 26 directors of the NIH's institutes and centres are not typically replaced when presidential administrations change.
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