The National Institutes of Health recently announced several changes in leadership on the Department of Health and Human Services Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents. The panel, a working group of the NIH Office of AIDS Research Advisory Committee (OARAC), consists of approximately 40 representatives from NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Health Resources and Services Administration, as well as scientists and clinicians from academia and primary care medical practices, and HIV/AIDS community representatives. The panel is charged with regularly updating HIV treatment guidelines based on advances in HIV therapy. The guidelines serve as the standard of medical care for treating HIV-infected patients in the United States.
The following panel leadership changes were announced at a recent OARAC meeting:
John G. Bartlett, MD, will retire from his position as Panel Co-Chair at the end of 2013, a position he has held since the panel’s creation in 1996.
Dr. Bartlett is Professor Emeritus of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. He served as Chief of the Infectious Diseases Division for 26 years before stepping down in 1996. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, a master of the American College of Physicians, and Past President of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Roy M. Gulick, MD, MPH, has been named as one of two new Panel Co-Chairs. Currently a Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York, Dr. Gulick served as a panel member from 2002 to March 2013. An expert on antiretroviral treatment strategies, new antiretroviral agents, clinical trial design and clinical management of HIV infection, Dr. Gulick currently serves as principal investigator of the Cornell HIV Clinical Trials Unit, part of the NIH-funded AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG). Additionally, he is Co-Chair of the Forum for Collaborative HIV Research, a board member of the International AIDS Society-USA, and a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation. Dr. Gulick served as chairman of the FDA Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee from 2001 to 2004.
Martin S. Hirsch, MD, has been named as the second new Panel Co-Chair. Dr. Hirsch currently is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. Serving on the panel from 1996 to 2012, Dr. Hirsch contributed to guidelines on managing drug resistance and other topics. His laboratory was the first to demonstrate that certain combinations of antiretrovirals had synergistic anti-HIV activity and was central to bringing these findings into large-scale human clinical trials performed within the ACTG. Dr. Hirsch was the first chair of the ACTG and served as director of the Harvard AIDS Clinical Trials Unit from 1986 to 2003. Dr. Hirsch is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Dr. Gulick and Dr. Hirsch will work alongside the third Panel Co-Chair H. Clifford Lane, MD, NIAID’s Clinical Director. Dr. Lane has served as a Panel Co-Chair since 2004. ■
