Johns Hopkins Epidemiologist Named to Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute Committee

Steven Goodman, MD, MHS, PhD, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University, has been appointed to a new government institute committee designed to guide standards for accurately comparing medical treatments.

Goodman, a core faculty member in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Clinical Trials and the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, is one of 15 individuals appointed by the head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office to serve on the Methodology Committee for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). Goodman is a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the Bloomberg School, and a professor of oncology and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Kimmel Cancer Center.

PCORI was established under the federal health reform act to better inform health decisions with research projects that provide reliable and relevant evidence on the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Such "outcomes" research specifically includes comparisons of various treatments.

Goodman currently co-chairs a committee at the Institute of Medicine on drug safety and serves on the board of directors of the Society for Clinical Trials. He is the editor of Clinical Trials: Journal of the Society for Clinical Trials and senior statistical editor for Annals of Internal Medicine. Goodman has taught at Hopkins since 1988 and has also served on a wide variety of national panels.

"The men and women named today bring impressive credentials and experience to this important task", Gene Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States and head of the GAO, said in a Jan. 21 announcement about the appointments.

The announcement, which includes the advisory committee's full membership, is at http://www.gao.gov/press/pcori_2011jan21.html.

Media contact: Tim Parsons, director of Public Affairs, at 410-955-7619 or tmparson@jhsph.edu.