Former FDA Commissioner Shares Lessons on Leadership, Public Health
Former U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, MD, brought decades of experience in medicine, public health, government and health policy to Creighton University in September, sharing perspectives on leadership, innovation and the evolving challenges facing healthcare during two conversations in Omaha.
The conversations offered varying perspectives on Hamburg’s career and work but shared a common theme: meaningful progress requires people and institutions to work beyond traditional boundaries. Reflecting on her transition from medicine into public health and health policy, Hamburg said her experience caring for patients with HIV and AIDS opened her eyes to “the intersection of medicine with broader social, legal, ethical and even political issues.” She recounted her tenure as New York City health commissioner, including efforts to address multidrug-resistant tuberculosis through an integrated, data-driven approach that brought together government agencies, hospitals, the criminal justice system, social services and community health workers.
That same emphasis on collaboration carried into the discussion of her time at the FDA, where Hamburg described efforts to make the agency more transparent and to strengthen partnerships among academia, industry and government. She argued that regulation, when done well, can support rather than impede innovation. She highlighted the importance of “regulatory science” in moving discoveries from research into products and treatments that can benefit patients. In the evening conversation, she expanded that idea to the broader health system, arguing that major health challenges do not fit neatly within individual disciplines.
“Our work has to be crosscutting if we’re going to really develop meaningful, sustainable solutions,” she said, emphasizing the importance of learning and working together across medicine, public health, science, technology and other fields.
Hamburg, now foreign secretary for the National Academy of Medicine, also spoke about the importance of trust, particularly as public health and science face an increasingly complex information environment. She encouraged health professionals to remain open to new ideas while maintaining a clear sense of mission and responsibility to the people they serve. Across both sessions, she returned to the need to connect science and innovation with real-world needs and ensure that medicine, public health, research, government and communities are working together to address the challenges ahead.
Women in Medicine and Science sponsored the afternoon session at CHI Health Creighton University Medical Center – Bergan Mercy, which brought together CHI staff and Creighton clinical faculty and staff. The evening session was sponsored by the School of Medicine Distinguished Lecture Series and the Institute for Population Health Policy Seminar Series on the Omaha campus for faculty, staff and students. Maureen Tierney, MD, MPH, professor and associate dean for clinical research and public health, moderated both events.
