Meeting face-to-face makes all the difference

By Heidi C. Marchand, Pharm.D. While to many, the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C., signal spring, for my office the season means bountiful opportunities to meet with groups in town for meetings and conventions in our capital city. Patient and health professional advocacy groups that are some of FDA’s key stakeholders come to FDA Headquarters in nearby Maryland – or we go downtown to their meeting sites – for a mutual exchange of information that often has a profound influence on how we do our jobs protecting and promoting the public health. So far, we have had informative discussions with groups as varied as the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Celiac Disease Alliance, the ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) Association, and Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy. Because we are part of the Office of the Commissioner, we’re familiar with the agency across its various centers and are ideally positioned to connect stakeholders with the experts best suited to answer questions and offer assistance. We hear from individuals on the front lines – parents of patients with heartbreaking childhood diseases, nurses who witness firsthand the consequences of a medical device that fails to work properly, patients who want to know where and how they can participate in clinical trials. Many are experts in their area of advocacy – they’ve had to be – and their insights are invaluable. P...
Source: Mass Device - Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Tags: Blog News Well FDA Source Type: news