Family physician Kathleen Uhl, M.D., of Silver Spring, Md., has been named director of the FDA Office of Women's Health. Board-certified in family medicine and an AAFP Fellow, Uhl is a captain in the U.S. Public Health Service and most recently served as a supervisory medical officer with the FDA's Center for Drug Research and Evaluation.
Uhl holds dual faculty appointments -- in family medicine and internal medicine -- at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. She also practices at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
Uhl will take up her OWH duties in mid-December.
In her tenure with the FDA, Uhl has collaborated with the Office of Women's Health on a variety of FDA initiatives related to the inclusion of women and minorities in clinical trials. While with the CDER, she served as a reviewer and supervisory medical officer for the center's Pregnancy and Lactation Labeling Team in the Office of New Drugs.
According to an FDA news release, as director, Uhl will
- oversee programs that aim to ensure FDA functions are gender-sensitive and responsive to women's health needs,
- seek to correct gender disparities in medical product testing and regulatory policies,
- monitor the progress of women's health initiatives within the FDA, and
- partner with governmental agencies and private-sector organizations to promote women's health objectives.
Uhl comes to a post vacant since Aug. 31, when the previous OWH director, Susan Wood, Ph.D., stepped down suddenly. As reported in an earlier AAFP News Now story, Wood's action came after former FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford, D.V.M., Ph.D., announced he would delay a decision on granting over-the-counter status to the emergency contraceptive known as Plan B. Crawford resigned as FDA head on Sept. 23.
