For decades, scientists have looked at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as an agency that publishes papers, according to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

Under President Donald Trump’s second term, the emphasis for NIH funding has shifted to “provable, testable hypotheses, not ideological narratives,” he said, which is resulting in widespread reforms to the agency.

Bhattacharya, who obtained both a doctorate in economics and a medical degree from Stanford University within three years of each other, outlined changes that the NIH has implemented in his first year as the agency’s director and talked about his vision for the next three years in an interview with Epoch Times Senior Editor Jan Jekielek.

The NIH has been instrumental in medical advances for decades, Bhattacharya said, but in the 21st century, it became “much more of a staid institution, not willing to take intellectual risks.”

During the same time, the agency “was willing to take risks on dangerous gain-of-function and other social agendas, like DEI, that it had no business really engaging in.”

“I think the NIH now, under my leadership, under President Trump’s leadership, and under what Secretary [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] is looking over … is focused on actually addressing the chronic health problems of this country, reversing the flatlining of life expectancy, and making good on its mission ... research that improves the health and longevity of the American people, and the whole world,” he said.

One of the 13 agencies managed by the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH is the largest supporter of biomedical research globally, providing 85 percent of all biomedical research funding worldwide, according to Bhattacharya.

It funds about $50 billion in scientific research via grants to hundreds of thousands of researchers at academic institutions and hospitals, he said.

The NIH is not an agency that makes decisions or policies about public health directly, Bhattacharya said, noting that he intends to “remove the politicization of science that has existed for decades.”

Over the past 15 to 20 years, the NIH has incorporated political rather than scientific agendas, Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times.

“Probably the most prominent example of this is DEI—diversity, equity, and inclusion,” he said.

“If you were a researcher outside the NIH, the ticket to getting sort of extra, relatively easy funds was to promise to do DEI research. Looking into it, much of that research had no real scientific basis at all. I don’t even characterize this as science.”

As an example, Bhattacharya cited a project that studied the question: “Is structural racism the root reason why African Americans have worse hypertension results than other races?”

“The problem with that hypothesis is that there’s no way to test it,“ he said. ”If structural racism is the cause, then what control group can you have to test the idea that that is true? ... None of that actually translated over to better health for anybody, much less for African Americans.

“Scientists of the country understand that if they want NIH support, they need to propose projects that have the chance of improving the health of people rather than achieving some ideology that should not belong at the NIH.”

The NIH has redirected its funding since Trump took office for his second term.

That includes allocating funds for “early career scientists,” Bhattacharya said.

There should be “fundamental changes” to NIH funding for educational institutions, Bhattacharya said, and he intends to work with Congress “to make [this] happen.”

On Jan. 5, a federal appeals court ruled that the Trump administration cannot reduce the amount of money the NIH pays grant recipients for indirect costs, including administration and facility maintenance.

The ruling applies to three lawsuits filed by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and 21 other states, as well as hospitals, schools, and the associations that represent them.

The NIH published a guidance document in February 2025 to limit how much grant funding could flow to research institutions to cover their indirect costs. These are costs that cannot be directly attributed to an individual research project and include expenses related to funding equipment, facilities, and research staff.

The guidance document states that these indirect costs could not exceed 15 percent of funding for direct research costs, regardless of the costs incurred at universities. The NIH stated that Johns Hopkins, Yale, and Harvard charged in excess of 60 percent for indirect costs, even though they had billions of dollars in endowments.

Attorneys for those who filed suit said small universities don’t have such large endowments and that if the guidance took effect, there would be many layoffs, stalled clinical trials, and laboratory closures.

“If you don’t have amazing scientists who can win the grants, you’re not going to get the facility support. But in order to attract excellent scientists to your institution, you have to have excellent facilities. It’s the kind of Catch-22 that guarantees that our funding from the NIH is going to be concentrated in relatively few institutions,” Bhattacharya said.

Scientists at schools such as the University of Alabama, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Kansas deserve access to funding such as Stanford and Harvard, he said.

—Jeff Louderback and Jan Jekeliek 

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