Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was appointed as the CDC’s interim director last month as part of a broader restructuring within the Department of Health as the midterm elections approach.
The CDC has experienced budget cuts, staffing reductions, and controversy under the leadership of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine skeptic.
“I am excited about the number of people I’ve had the privilege of meeting and interviewing, and I am very optimistic that we will select… an excellent leader for this agency,” Klomp said during a conference hosted by Stat News.
Bhattacharya succeeded Jim O’Neill, the HHS deputy secretary, who had been serving as the CDC’s interim director since August. O’Neill was appointed following former director Susan Monarez’s dismissal by Donald Trump after she opposed proposed changes to vaccine policy place forth by Kennedy.
Monarez’s removal prompted the resignation of four senior CDC officials, who voiced concerns over Kennedy’s anti-vaccine policies and the spread of misinformation.
Under O’Neill’s leadership, the CDC removed longstanding general recommendations for four childhood vaccines in January and last year endorsed the opinion of an advisory committee opposing the early use of a combined measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccine.
On Monday, a federal judge temporarily blocked key aspects of Kennedy’s vaccine policy overhaul, including reducing the number of routinely recommended childhood vaccinations and restructuring the CDC’s advisory committee on immunization practices. (Reporting by Mariam Sunny in Bengaluru and Michael Erman in Recent York; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)
