New NIH director is a Wyoming native

Mar. 9—CHEYENNE — Dr. Monica Bertagnolli grew up on White Acorn ranch, outside of South Pass City, between Lander and Rock Springs. She worked on her family's ranch, tending to sheep and later cattle, and attended Rock Springs High, 95 miles away.

Nominated by President Joe Biden last May as the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bertagnolli was approved by the U.S. Senate and took office in November 2023, becoming the first surgeon and second woman to hold the position.

"There's lot that can be said about being from a rural background," she said of her Wyoming roots. "I think you grow up being pretty resilient and self-reliant and, you know, (a) somewhat independent streak when you grow up in Wyoming. And I'm very, very, very proud of my Wyoming heritage."

Her grandfather immigrated to Sweetwater County in the first decade of the 20th century from northern Italy. He served as deputy sheriff for the county and started the ranch in the 1930s. Her grandmother ran the ranch.

Her mother's side of the family were French Basque sheep herders who came to the U.S. sometime in the late 1920s or early 1930s.

The ranch, still in the family today, is nearly 100 years old. It originally was a sheep ranch but changed to cattle while Bertagnolli was in college. Her father was a rancher and her mother a nurse.

Now serving as the head of a national governmental organization, she still keeps track of the Wyoming weather and remains conscious of rural health issues.

"One of our most critical initiatives right now is making sure that the advantages of health technology, health information and health care reach every single part of the United States, and rural counties are really important," she said.

She recalled once when she broke her arm on the ranch and didn't make the 95-mile trip to the doctor's office in Rock Springs until the next day.

"The concerns of people in Wyoming are very, very much my concerns as I am here as NIH director, and I feel if we can do really, really, really well, for the people in Wyoming, then we've made a great contribution to the entire nation."

She said she is currently working on supporting the efforts of the Riverton community, state government, federal government and the Shoshone Tribe to get a hospital in Riverton to serve Fremont County.

Bertagnolli also said she wants to focus on bringing more research sites across the Cowboy State, which is the primary focus of the NIH. For now, they mostly focus on clinical research.

"It's really important that research includes the more rural locations, because the way we solve problems for people is very dependent on the individual communities," she said. "So, if we don't include people who live in rural locations in our research, we're not going to be able to effectively solve their issues."

Now, Bertagnolli lives in Newton, Massachusetts, and has two sons with her husband. She commutes to the nation's capital about four days per week.

"It's only an hour-and-a-half by plane," she said. "For Wyoming, that's nothing."

Any given day, she'll works with researchers, policy people, legislators in the capital and heads of other agencies across the United States Department of Health and Human Services to try to improve the health of people across the nation.

"(The NIH is) the largest funder of biomedical research in the world. And we support everything from basic, fundamental bench research and laboratories, all the way through to research that impacts remote communities like, you know, Sweetwater County, Wyoming, or Fremont County, Wyoming. So, we really encompass research everywhere," she said.

Before her current role, Bertagnolli was director of the National Cancer Institute and a cancer surgeon for more than 35 years. She specialized in treating and researching gastrointestinal cancers in her roles as the Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital and a member of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Treatment and Sarcoma Centers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, all in Boston.

After graduating from Rock Springs High, she earned a bachelor's degree in engineering from Princeton University, then a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. She trained in surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital and was a research fellow in tumor immunology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

In his nomination announcement in 2023, President Biden said "Dr. Bertagnolli has spent her career pioneering scientific discovery and pushing the boundaries of what is possible to improve cancer prevention and treatment for patients and ensuring that patients in every community have access to quality care. Dr. Bertagnolli is a world-class physician-scientist whose vision and leadership will ensure NIH continues to be an engine of innovation to improve the health of the American people."

While she was practicing medicine, she said it was important to keep focused on caring for people as if they were family.

"I wanted people to be taken care of the way I'd want my own family to be taken care of myself. That's kind of been a touchstone for me, I still feel that way. ... Every time I do research, or run a program at NIH, I think of the people that it could benefit, like I think of my own family or my own community. I think that perspective really helps keep us focused on what's really important."

She still has family in the Wyoming area and visits the ranch every summer. Every time she visits, there's work waiting for her on the ranch, including the informal 'White Acorn Triathlon' which is 10 miles of herding cattle, five miles of building fences and one mile of digging ditches.

"I'm really proud to be from that state," she said. "Maybe I'm just a summer resident but can still consider Wyoming to be my home."

Noah Zahn is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle's local government/business reporter. He can be reached at 307-633-3128 or nzahn@wyomingnews.com. Follow him on X @NoahZahnn.