(August 17, 2022) The Reagan-Udall Foundation announced today that former Commissioner of Food and Drugs Jane E. Henney, MD, and former FDA Chief of Staff Lauren Silvis, JD, will lead the operational evaluation of the Food and Drug Administration’s human foods and tobacco work. Henney will lead the evaluation team focused on human foods while Silvis will lead the team focused on tobacco. The project was announced by Commissioner Robert Califf late last month. 

The first shipment of naloxone in a new national effort to reverse overdoses arrived somewhat unceremoniously.

When FDA announced last month it had commissioned an outside evaluation of its foods program (as well as tobacco), it was seen by many as a formal, if somewhat tepid, admission that something had gone very wrong at the agency.

While most regular folks wouldn’t give a hill of beans about the organization of bureaucracies in Washington, D.C., frustrated taxpayers should be taking note of seismic rumblings about restructurings that are shaking some of the biggest, most powerful, and influential federal health agencies. Biden Administration officials, in one of their notable moves, have announced that responses to pandemics and other public health crises will be led now by a separate, independent division within the sprawling Health and Human Services agency.

On July 20, Robert Califf, the head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), announced that he would commission external experts to conduct “a comprehensive evaluation” of the agency’s food and nicotine divisions. Read more

Facing sharp criticism in the media that FDA’s approach to food safety is “broken,” “Byzantine” and a “ridiculous joke,” the agency is undertaking a “top to bottom” review of the “structure, function, funding and leadership” of its food program, agency representatives told Congress yesterday. Read more