2009-05-19
The U.S. Senate confirmed former New York City health commissioner
Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg as Commissioner of the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) by a unanimous voice vote.
Dr. Hamburg was appointed as acting health commissioner of New York
City in 1991 and became commissioner the following year. After stepping
down as health commissioner in 1997, she served as assistant secretary
for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human
Services, where she created a bioterrorism initiative and led planning
for the pandemic flu response. Dr. Hamburg will succeed Dr. Andrew von
Eschenbach, who stepped down as FDA Commissioner in January and
formerly served as director of the National Cancer Institute. Dr.
Joshua Sharfstein, the former health commissioner of Baltimore who had
been serving as Acting Commissioner at the FDA, will become Principal
Deputy Commissioner at the FDA.
ASH works with the FDA, particularly the Office of Oncology Drug
Products within FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, on
issues related to approvals, safety, and endpoints for products used by
its members.
Additionally, on Friday, May 15, President Obama announced
the appointment of Dr. Thomas Frieden as Director of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr. Frieden has served as
Commissioner of the New York City Health Department since 2002. Dr.
Frieden’s experience in public health includes previous work at CDC
from 1990 to 2002, serving as a CDC Epidemiologic Intelligence Service
Officer in the early 1990s. Dr. Frieden’s appointment does not require
confirmation by the Senate and he will begin his work at CDC in
June. ASH has been working closely with the CDC’s National Center for
Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities to increase attention to
blood diseases.
Dr. Hamburg’s confirmation and Dr. Frieden’s appointment follow the recent confirmation and swearing-in
of former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and
Human Services, the federal department that oversees agencies including
the FDA, CDC, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
The Obama Administration has not yet announced nominees to head NIH or CMS but is expected to do so in the coming weeks.
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