NIH Strat Plan letter from NCD
February 19, 2026
Director Jay Bhattacharya
National Institutes of Health
9000 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, Maryland 20892
Dear Director Bhattacharya:
I am writing as Acting Chairman of the National Council on Disability (NCD), an independent, bipartisan federal agency that advises Congress, the President, and his Administration on matters affecting the lives of people with disabilities, to praise several aspects of your recently released Strategic Plan for Disability Health Research and to request a meeting with you and your staff regarding plan Objectives 2.3 (disability health curricula) and 3.2 (inclusion of people with disabilities as participants in clinical research).
In the last Trump administration, during which I served as President Trump’s designated Chairman of NCD, my focus for the Council’s work was in the areas of health disparities and discrimination experienced by people with disabilities, and the development and release of bioethics report series with topics spanning organ transplant discrimination; quality-adjusted life years used to determine the value of medicines and treatments; medical futility decisions; assisted suicide, and genetic testing. During the first Trump administration, NCD thoroughly briefed HHS leadership and senior staff on the bioethics series, which informed then HHS Office of Civil Rights Director’s initial text for HHS’ revision of its Rehabilitation Act Section 504 regulation.
My successor continued the Council’s critical work in this area with research and advisement in the areas of prenatal testing, clinical trials, and an expansive framework outlining core and tertiary areas that, if addressed, would help eliminate health disparities experienced by people with disabilities and improve health care access. In September 2024, NCD provided a policy briefing about NCD’s 2024 The Implicit and Explicit Exclusion of People with Disabilities in Clinical Trials report to 15 senior staff at HHS, including those in the Secretary’s office, the Office of Human Research Protections, the Office of General Counsel, the Office of Civil Rights, the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, and the Office of Public Health and Science, with a thorough follow-up meeting in December 2024.
Presently, NCD is researching the need for clinical care and competency training on disability for allied health professionals for a forthcoming policy brief. In January 2026, we closed a Request for Information into this topic, for which we received much valuable information. NCD is also researching the increasing numbers of youth and young adults with disabilities living in nursing home settings, some without the need for nursing-level care, which may also be of interest to your work regarding health outcomes for people with disabilities.
I would like to reestablish NCD’s longstanding and collegial working relationship across HHS leadership, including NIH, and explore ways in which NCD can be an ongoing advisor during the implementation of NIH’s new disability research strategic plan. To that end, I invite you to have your staff contact Joan Durocher, our Director of Policy and General Counsel, at jdurocher@ncd.gov, to arrange a date and time that will work for you to meet to discuss these topics further.
Respectfully,
Neil Romano
Acting Chairman
Cc:// Administrator Mehmet C. Oz, MD, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
Principal Deputy Administrator Mary Lazare, Administration for Community Living