WASHINGTON – Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Scott Gottlieb, MD, will be leaving his position next month.

Gottlieb cited being closer to his wife and three children as a reason for his resignation. Gottlieb has been commuting to Washington from his home in Westport, Connecticut weekly for the job.  

"All of us at HHS are proud of the remarkable work Commissioner Gottlieb has done at the FDA, said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. He has been an exemplary public health leader, aggressive advocate for American patients and a passionate promoter of innovation,"

Some of Gottlieb’s accomplishments include the affordability of generic drugs, youth e-cigarette use, confronting opioid addiction problems, tobacco use and chronic disease.

On the food front, Gottlieb has furthered the implementation of food safety objectives of the Food Safety Modernization Act. Just in the last few weeks, he announced the issuance of a guidance to industry on how to comply with its responsibility to warn the public as needed during a food recall, and more recently published a document reviewing the FDA’s strategy for ensuring the safety of imported food. On the day of his resignation, the FDA issued its latest installment of its intentional adulteration of food draft guidance.

“The are many important efforts we undertook together, countless new policies we advanced, and laws we enforced with vigor to protect consumers,” Gottlieb said. “Over the coming weeks I’ll continue to work to cement more of these efforts, to secure our 2020 budget, and to help transition the agency to new leadership.”

Gottlieb was nominated by President Trump and sworn in as 23^rd commissioner of the agency on May 11, 2017.