National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya attempted to reassure members of Congress on both sides of the aisle on Tuesday that his biomedical research agency is on the right track.
Bhattacharya, who is also the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified for more than two hours during a hearing with the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, where Republicans and Democrats pressed him on the agency’s research priorities.
NIH funds basic science research at universities nationwide that advances biomedical research and pharmaceutical development.
Since taking the directorship almost a year ago, Bhattacharya has come under scrutiny for his handling of the nearly $50 billion agency budget amid reports that the agency has been slow-walking grant disbursements this year.
Tuesday’s hearing was Bhattacharya’s first appearance before Congress after being named by President Donald Trump as acting CDC director on top of his work at NIH.
The CDC has reportedly been in turmoil since Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired the Senate-confirmed director last summer resulting from conflicts over Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism.
Kennedy’s decisions on vaccines have led to a sharp decline in trust in public health institutions in recent months, particularly the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration.
GOP advisers to the Trump administration have stressed the need for health officials to downplay any vaccine policy changes ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, as Republicans struggle to earn voters’ trust on healthcare issues.
Here are the three most important takeaways from the hearing.
Childhood vaccines important, but no mandates
When asked about vaccine policy, Bhattacharya was careful not to criticize Kennedy or others in the Trump administration who have advocated limiting the number of vaccines children receive.
Bhattacharya said, “Routine childhood vaccinations are tremendously important for childhood health,” and noted that the U.S. healthcare system is “a little more fragmented” than those in countries that recommend fewer childhood vaccines but have stronger safety nets to catch and prevent infections early.
But he argued that vaccine mandates, like those pushed during the COVID-19 pandemic, decrease public trust in public health.
“The reason why you see high vaccination rates in countries without vaccine mandates outside the U.S. is because public trust in public health is just very high,” Bhattacharya said. “That’s the thing we have to address in this country, and I believe mandates are counterproductive for that.
The NIH director rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic for criticizing vaccine mandates. Bhattacharya was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which argued for sheltering vulnerable populations but ending lockdown measures for young, healthy people.
Not funding research for US enemies
Bhattacharya told the committee that he does not believe the U.S. should fund any research in “countries of concern” designated by the State Department as potential threats to U.S. interests.
Auditing research conducted in foreign countries is a priority for Bhattacharya because of mismanaged funding during the pandemic. The NIH came under significant scrutiny following the pandemic for research funded by the institution conducted in China, which some experts speculated may have been the origin of the outbreak.
“I think if you can’t trust and you can’t do the auditing kind that we are able to do with domestic institutions, you shouldn’t be funding those institutions at all, especially countries that are not particularly friendly to the United States,” Bhattacharya said.
Bhattacharya told Congress that one of his top priorities at NIH is to improve auditing of U.S.-funded research abroad. That includes places identified as countries of concern, such as China, Iran, and Venezuela, as well as projects conducted in allied countries.
The NIH director said there was “a lot of brouhaha” with new policies at the onset, but he said better auditing of international research means “we can have a much more secure foreign collaboration than we had before.”
Eliminating HIV in the US by 2030
Bhattacharya said he is optimistic that the United States will be able to domestically eradicate HIV by 2030, driven by NIH advances.
Roughly 1.2 million Americans over age 13 live with HIV, and there are nearly 32,000 new HIV infections per year, according to the CDC.
Bhattacharya said the antiviral drug lencapavir, a prophylaxis injection drug, is a promising opportunity to offer “near total protection against getting HIV.”
“I confess, as a professor outside, I was skeptical about the timeline, because I’ve been hearing promises for any HIV epidemic for 40 years,” Bhattacharya said. “But what I found over the last year or two is that decades of HIV investments in basic sciences lay the groundwork for developing lencapavir, a long-acting antiretroviral agent, a new one, a single injection of lung kappa fear that lasts six to 12 months and offers near total protection against getting HIV, even if you’re exposed with it.”
Democrats expressed skepticism that eliminating HIV infections in the U.S. alone would be sufficient, arguing that infectious diseases do not stop at international borders.
The Trump administration has cut significant funding to international HIV/AIDS research through the State Department and USAID, which Democrats said makes achieving a 2030 deadline for eradication impossible.
GLYPHOSATE IS STRAINING THE MAHA COALITION
When he received pushback from Democrats regarding Trump’s commitment to ending HIV, Bhattacharya noted that the president, during his first term in 2019, launched a presidential initiative to eradicate HIV worldwide by 2030.
Bhattacharya said that, although he is concerned about ensuring HIV prevention and treatment are accessible worldwide, funding cuts to the State Department’s effort to do so are “not his area.”
