Once reluctant, new NIH chief Monica Bertagnolli has embraced her leading role

When cancer surgeon Monica Bertagnolli learned earlier this year that President Joe Biden wanted her to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the $47.5 billion agency that is the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, “I didn’t embrace it,” she says with a laugh. She was just a few months into heading NIH’s largest component, the National Cancer Institute (NCI). “My reaction was: ‘But I’m the NCI director and I have plans.’ We were accomplishing some really great things together. And it was just too soon.” But the idea grew on her. She had gotten to know the chiefs of NIH’s 26 other institutes and centers at weekly meetings and found them “dynamic and talented and eager for innovation.” NIH’s acting director, Lawrence Tabak, was lamenting the lack of a permanent NIH chief since geneticist Francis Collins stepped down in December 2021 after 12 years at the helm. And Bertagnolli saw the post as a chance to advance “some things that I am passionate about that I think will help biomedical research overall.” So, she took the job. Now, just 6 weeks in, she sat down this week for a 45-minute interview in her office between a swirl of meetings, calls, and a town hall with NIH staff that filled a nearly 500-seat room for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. She discussed her goal of making NIH research more “equitable and accessible” by expanding clinical trials to more rural and minority patients. She also wants r...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research