NIH’s Director Talks Highs And Lows Of Tenure, What He’d Be Wary Of In Future
Dr. Francis Collins chats with Stat about what projects he's excited about and if he would stay on at NIH if asked.
Stat:
NIH's Francis Collins On Obama, Congress, And His One Regret
At what was supposed to be the end of his tenure atop the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins is still a very busy man. In his seven and a half years leading the agency, Collins has been involved in the response to Ebola and Zika. He has helped secure the first funding increases for the NIH in decades. Congress just this month funneled billions of dollars into several major projects — the Precision Medicine Initiative, the cancer moonshot — that Collins helped craft. This was supposed to be the finale for Collins. But, as he told STAT in a recent interview in his offices here, he loves the NIH and believes in public service, so if asked he would consider it a “privilege” to remain director under President-elect Donald Trump. (Kaplan and Scott, 12/16)