• Introduction: Tom Price, MD — 23rd Secretary of Health and Human Services
• Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD — 18th Director, National Institutes of Health (NIH)
What Jay Bhattacharya said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Jay Bhattacharya, the 18th director of the NIH, argued that the agency's $50 billion budget is a vital investment despite being small relative to the health ecosystem. He highlighted a chronic disease crisis, including type 2 diabetes, obesity, rising cancer incidence, and Alzheimer's, and said the NIH must deliver better health affordably to restore public trust. He outlined initiatives: the REPEATS common fund for replication studies, a new NIH journal for replication papers, a 'link discoveries' button on PubMed, and broader scientist metrics from the S-index challenge. He discussed investments in organoid technology, including a standard organoid modeling center, and AI applications like AlphaFold for protein folding and clinical trial enrollment. He introduced the unified funding strategy, which will fund about 1,600 early career investigators this year, and called for partnerships to improve life expectancy and reduce disease mortality.
Key takeaways
The NIH will fund about 1,600 new early career investigators this year through the unified funding strategy, based on their potential to challenge their fields.
The NIH is launching a new journal this fall for publishing replication studies, with rigorous peer review but less gatekeeping.
The NIH approved the REPEATS common fund to support teams replicating scientific ideas, shifting culture toward collaboration.
The NIH is investing in organoid technology, including a standard organoid modeling center to evaluate when organoids outperform animal models.
The NIH will use AI, building on tools like AlphaFold, to answer biological and clinical questions and improve clinical trial enrollment.
Thank you. Thank you. My family's here. So, good afternoon everybody. I hope you all are enjoying Health Connect South. Another grand event. Kudos to Russ and to Mark and the entire team. It is my privilege to introduce Dr. Jay Bhattacharya who is the 18th director of the National Institutes of Health. And Dr. Bhattacharya brings an unusually broad perspective to that role. He is both a physician and an economist having earned his medical degree and doctorate in economics at Stanford University. Before assuming the leadership of the NIH he was a professor of medicine, economics, and health policy at Stanford where his research examined healthcare economics, biomedical innovation, government programs, and maybe most importantly the health and well-being of vulnerable populations. During the COVID-19 pandemic Dr. Bhattacharya became one of the nation's most prominent and sometimes most debated and discussed voices on public health policy. And whether one agreed with him or not he consistently pressed the health care community to consider the full ramifications and consequences of its decisions whether they were clinical or economic or educational or social. And that willingness to question assumptions, to engage in difficult issues, and to defend open scientific debate continues to shape his leadership. A couple of fun facts about Dr. Bhattacharya. He has not one, not two, not three, but four degrees from Stanford University, bachelor's, masters, MD, and PhD. And demonstrating that health economists occasionally produce something tangible. He is also a named inventor on a US patent for a health care cost and flexible spending account calculator. So at a time of extraordinary scientific opportunity and equally significant challenges involving cost and access and trust and public health, we are fortunate to hear from someone whose career has spanned the full spectrum of medicine, economics, research and policy. So please join me in a warm Health Connect South welcome to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.
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Bhattacharya, J. (2026, September 18). Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD — 18th Director, National Institutes of Health (NIH) [Interview transcript]. Health Connect South. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1995475/
MLA
Jay Bhattacharya. "Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD — 18th Director, National Institutes of Health (NIH)." Health Connect South, 18 Sep. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1995475/.
BibTeX
@misc{bhattacharya2026_1995475,
author = {Jay Bhattacharya},
title = {Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD — 18th Director, National Institutes of Health (NIH)},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Health Connect South. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {sep},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1995475/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
