INSIDE WOMAN –
March 13, 2025 – “They have increased my blood pressure and heart rate,” Volkow said before declining to answer specific questions about Trump administration policy changes, instead referring them to the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH’s parent agency. Nora Volkow, the federal government’s top drug addiction researcher…
But in an interview on the research agency’s campus here last week, Volkow delivered an impassioned defense of the NIH and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the roughly $1.6 billion sub-agency that she has led since 2003.
Volkow, who is originally from Mexico, said that the NIH is a significant source of pride and admiration everywhere she travels. And while she said it’s sometimes good to “shake the system” for the purpose of rooting out inefficiencies, she cautioned that doing so is only productive if the end goal is truly to strengthen the organization.
