Houston’s Dr. Hahn is the Right Man to Lead FDA

Today I introduced Houstonian Dr. Stephen Hahn, the nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Excerpts of my floor remarks are below, and video can be found here.

For the past five years, Dr. Hahn has helped lead the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, the world’s leading cancer center. He’s quickly risen through the ranks of a renowned institution that includes some of the most esteemed faculty in the nation, including a Nobel Laureate and more than a dozen members of the National Academy of Medicine and National Academy of Sciences, among others.

He went from Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology, to Chief Operating Officer and Deputy President, to his current position as Chief Medical Officer. He brings both the experience of a talented and dedicated physician as well as that of a leader of a major health care and research institution.

Like the FDA, MD Anderson is a large organization, operating on more than a $5 billion budget. Just to give you a glimpse of the scope of MD Anderson’s operations, last fiscal year it had more than 20,000 employees, 7,000 trainees who treated 141,000 patients, and ran 1,200 clinical trials and logged 1.5 million outpatient visits.

The agency needs a commissioner who has the experience managing a large organization, which he does, who understands the drug development process, which he does, who is committed to swiftly bringing life-saving medications to market, and who prioritizes the health and safety of the American people above all else.

I firmly believe Dr. Hahn is the right man for the job. Throughout his career, he’s proven that outstanding patient care is his top priority: as an oncologist, providing top-notch care to each patient he saw, as a professor educating our next generation of physicians, and now as the Chief Medical Executive at MD Anderson where he oversees medical practice and patient care. I have no doubt that if confirmed, Dr. Hahn will bring his patient-centric work ethic to Washington and lead the FDA with the same skill and determination we have seen him display at MD Anderson.