A health economist who traced causal links in public policy
His study redirected the question of Russia’s mortality crisis from transition alone to the campaign’s end.
Jay Bhattacharya is an Indian-born American physician and health economist whose work connects medical evidence to questions of public policy and population well-being. His research examined how government programs, economic conditions, and biomedical innovation shape health outcomes. His 2013 study of the Gorbachev Anti-Alcohol Campaign argued that the campaign’s end, rather than the transition to capitalism alone, explained a large share of Russia’s early-1990s mortality crisis, shifting the terms of the post-Soviet debate. His later public interventions, especially during COVID-19, made him a contested figure in disputes over epidemiology, state restrictions, and scientific authority.
Career Timeline
- 1968Born in Calcutta, India
- 1990B.A. and M.A. in economics, Stanford University
- 1997M.D., Stanford University School of Medicine
- 2000Ph.D. in economics, Stanford University
- 1998–2001Economist at RAND; visiting assistant professor at UCLA
- 2001–2025Professor of medicine, with courtesy appointments in economics, Stanford University
- 2013Co-author of “The Gorbachev Anti-Alcohol Campaign and Russia’s Mortality Crisis”
- 2025–현재Director of the National Institutes of Health