NIH Director Bhattacharya Named Acting CDC Head

Washington -- National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya has been appointed as acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adding leadership to the nation's top public health agency amid ongoing instability in the Trump administration's second term.

An administration official confirmed the temporary move on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because the appointment had not yet been publicly announced. The change, first reported by The New York Times, marks Bhattacharya as the third leader of the CDC since President Donald Trump returned to office. The agency, based in Atlanta, has faced turbulence under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., including abrupt personnel shifts and debates over vaccination policies.

The previous CDC director, Susan Monarez, was fired last summer by Kennedy less than a month after her Senate confirmation. Monarez, a veteran government scientist, later told a Senate committee that her dismissal stemmed from her refusal to approve Kennedy's proposed alterations to the childhood vaccination schedule without supporting data. Following her departure, Deputy Health Secretary Jim O'Neill, a...