Last month, I had the honor to be asked to travel to London as part of an international review panel for the Wellcome Trust. The Trust is a worldwide charitable organization dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. It was great to be able to see the extraordinary research being performed by scientists in the UK.

During the meeting, I was reunited with Professor Maria Marlow of the Department of Pharmacy, University of Nottingham. Maria was one of my first postdoctoral fellows, joining my research group soon after we formed it at M.I.T. in the early 1990s. It is always a great pleasure to see my fellows who are now noted professors in academia all over the world.

As many of you know, one of my missions is to help reduce or even eliminate the health disparities of underserved populations in the United States. Health disparities represent a major public health emergency in our country and eliminating them is a major challenge.

During my term on the National Science Board of the FDA, I advocated for the establishment of an Office of Minority Health for the FDA. I am proud that Congress moved forward with this initiative and established the Office of Minority Health. On its first anniversary, the FDA invited me back to provide an address on ways in which race, culture and ethnicitiy should be considered in adopting regulatory policies and actions. I gave my talk last month as part of the first “FDA Commissioner Health Disparities Lectureship,” and I was grateful to share the podium with Professor George King from Harvard. I applaud the leadership of the FDA, especially Dr. Michelle Yeboah (Director of the Office) , and the leadership of HHS, especially Dr. Nadine Gracia (Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health) for their work in the elimination of Health Disparities.