Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Will Rebuild Trust in Public Health

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Will Rebuild Trust in Public Health
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University and one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, in Hartford, Conn., on Feb. 17, 2023. Tal Atzmon/The Epoch Times
Wilk Wilkinson
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Commentary
Just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump announced that Dr. Jay Bhattacharya would be his nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Bhattacharya and I were together at Stanford University for a bold, first-of-its-kind symposium on public health decision-making during the COVID-19 crisis. The idea behind the symposium was to shatter the public health echo chamber and bring diverse perspectives together in respectful dialogue. Dr. Bhattacharya and I are close friends, but our backgrounds are quite different. He is firmly at home at Stanford, having gone there as an undergraduate, and then going on to get a medical degree and a Ph.D. there before joining the faculty as a Professor of Health Policy. I, on the other hand, am a blue-collar Midwesterner who enlisted the in U.S. Navy after high school. I carry no titles of academic distinction and was likely the only participant at the symposium without a medical degree or Ph.D.
Wilk Wilkinson
Wilk Wilkinson
Author
Wilk Wilkinson is a devoted husband, a loving father, a steadfast Christian conservative, and the insightful host of the “Derate The Hate” podcast.