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Letter from the Steering Committee

Dear Fellow Citizens:

On behalf of the Steering Committee for the Centers for Education & Research on Therapeutics (CERTs) I am pleased to present the CERTs Year 7 Annual Report.

We made unprecedented progress this year in our mission to provide the public with a trusted national resource. We conducted research and provided education in therapeutics, and brought researchers with related agendas together to work on a broad range of projects to further our vision of improved public health through the safe and effective use of drugs, medical devices, and biological products.

This year we are particularly excited to welcome four new centers to the CERTs program: the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine; Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; the University of Iowa; and the Weill Medical College of Cornell University. With the addition of these new centers, our areas of research cover an even broader array of critical areas in therapeutics research, including consumer and patient education, mental health, aging and the elderly, and medical devices.

This report highlights the ongoing work of the CERTs, summarizes but a few of the projects completed this year, and introduces the efforts from the new centers. These projects range from the study of herbal supplement use to an examination of health care spending and comparative costs of particular therapeutics. An important focus is development of methodology to better ensure drug safety and to fulfill the academic components of the national strategy to implement the recommendations of the landmark 2006 Institute of Medicine report on the future of drug safety.

As we complete our seventh year, we remain committed to generating and providing independent, unbiased, and useful information about the benefits and risks of important therapeutic products. We thank our extensive list of public and private partners in this enterprise. Working together, we can move toward our shared vision: to better inform health care providers, patients, policymakers, and others about the drugs, devices, and biological products that play such an important role in our daily lives.

Sincerely,

Hugh H. Tilson, MD, DrPH
Chair, on behalf of the CERTs Steering Committee

Georges C. Benjamin, MD, FACP; Marc L. Berger, MD; Enriqueta C. Bond, PhD; Lynn A. Bosco, MD, MPH; Janice K. Bush, MD; Robert M. Califf, MD; Elizabeth A. Chrischilles, PhD; Stephen Crystal, PhD; Susan N. Gardner, PhD; Harry A. Guess, MD, PhD; Judith M. Kramer, MD, MS; Alvin I. Mushlin, MD, ScM; Richard Platt, MD, MS; Wayne A. Ray, PhD; Kenneth G. Saag, MD, MSc; Marcel E. Salive, MD, MPH; David G. Schulke; Paul J. Seligman, MD, MPH; Scott R. Smith, RPh, PhD; Steven L. Solomon, MD; Alan D. Stiles, MD; Brian L. Strom, MD, MPH; Maria E. Suarez-Almazor, MD, PhD; Myrl Weinburg, CAE; Raymond L. Woosley, MD, PhD

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