The April announcement of National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya’s appointment and his public profile at Stanford University, where he was a professor of health policy, both state that his work has focused on vulnerable populations, and he’s published at least five papers on racial health disparities. In June, he specifically lauded sickle cell research as an NIH success, highlighting it as the kind of work “that advances the health and well-being of minority populations,” and that the NIH should continue supporting. “It absolutely must,” he told podcaster Andrew Huberman.
Yet that same month, Duke University hematologist Charity Oyedeji was notified that her $750,000 NIH grant was terminated. She’d been studying how to assess and stave off disability for Americans with sickle cell disease, who tend to age prematurely, and most of whom are Black. The June 16 notice said that “such diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) studies are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race … which harms the health of Americans.”
To Oyedeji, that made it sound like her patients weren’t worth spending research time or money on. “People in this project are Americans,” she told STAT. “So do you not think that diverse populations are considered in this blanket of ‘Americans?’ Is ‘Americans’ the white people?”
Despite his avowed support for vulnerable people, Bhattacharya’s tenure has seen such science swept up in the Trump administration’s attack on DEI. Grants for health disparities research have been terminated left and right, sometimes affecting the very topics he’s said are worth studying. When confronted, he claimed, incorrectly, that such cuts hadn’t happened. Whether he’s been unwilling or unable to prevent them — or simply unaware of what’s happening within his own agency — is hard to say.
This dissonance between his words and actions has escalated tension at the agency, leading to confrontations with his staff, widespread confusion about what research the agency will fund, and scattered attempts to clarify the record, according to internal memos, a recording of an NIH town hall, and court records reviewed by STAT, as well as interviews with current and former staffers. In one particularly tense internal meeting, an NIH employee directly confronted Bhattacharya, correcting his understanding of grant terminations at the agency he now leads.
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