New NIH director will prioritize equitable health care delivery

Key takeaways:

• Bertagnolli vowed to “restore trust in science and achieve equity in access.”
• She also highlighted the importance of maintaining patient-provider relationships.

During an introductory press briefing, new NIH Director Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, FACS, FASCO, called for a greater focus in clinical research to improve access to care.

“We have an unprecedented opportunity to embrace and increase access to innovation,” Bertagnolli said. “I want to focus on what NIH can do as a biomedical research institution to ensure our advances reach the people who need them.”

Bertagnolli, a surgical oncologist, past president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and former director of the National Cancer Institute, was confirmed as director of the NIH by the U.S. Senate in November. She is the second woman to hold the position and the 17th director overall.

Bertagnolli said that her life and career experiences have given her unique perspectives on barriers to care, particularly among rural patients.

“I know that managing the logistics of even routine checkups and preventive care can be very difficult for people who live in rural areas,” she said.

Bertagnolli recalled her admiration for her uncle, a primary care physician “who would travel across the entire state of Wyoming to care for veterans.”

“His devotion to his patients introduced me to the importance and the power of the doctor-patient relationship, something that I believe in deeply and believe we need to maintain as our focus as biomedical researchers,” she said.

One of Bertagnolli’s goals as NIH director is to advance health care delivery and implementation of science “to improve access to care.”

“How can we best ensure the already-available life-saving tools are getting to clinicians and helping patients?” she asked. “What a tragedy it would be if someone experiences ill health or loses their life because they don’t have access to what we already know will help them.”

Other priorities for her tenure include the following:

• pursuing biological insights “aggressively” to help speed their application;
• ensuring clinical research is comprehensive and robust and that the results of clinical trials are efficient, responsive and inclusive of everyone;
• using learning-based analytical tools to harness data to benefit patients and providers; and
• taking advantage of commonalities across disease areas to develop solutions for patients and providers.

“I aim to do everything that I can to help restore trust in science and achieve equity in access to the benefits that arise from biomedical research,” Bertagnolli said. “A guiding principle underlying everything that NIH does is the mandate that our job is not done when scientific discoveries are made. Our job is done when all people are living long and healthy lives.”