New Appointment to the FDA's Office of Public Health and Science

HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Joxel García, M.D., M.B.A., today announced the appointment of Jerry A. Menikoff, M.D., J.D, as the director of the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP), part of the Office of Public Health and Science, in the Office of the Secretary. 

Prior to joining OHRP, Dr. Menikoff served as the director of the Office of Human Subjects Research and a bioethicist, both at the National Institutes of Health.  He has written extensively on research and human subject protections, including several books and numerous journal articles, over the past fifteen years. 

Previous to his NIH appointments, Dr. Menikoff served for nine years as the chair of the human subjects committee and the hospital ethics committee at the University of Kansas Medical Center.  His educational background includes an M.D. from Washington University and law and public policy degrees from Harvard.  In addition, Dr. Menikoff has held academic positions in schools of law at the University of Akron, the University of Chicago, and Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY. He is on leave from the position of associate professor of law, ethics and medicine at the University of Kansas.

Dr. Ivor Pritchard, who had served as OHRP’s acting director since September 2007, will return to his position as senior advisor to the OHRP director.