Established by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), the new Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) will identify priorities for comparative effectiveness research and provide funding for conducting research that compares different types of therapies or treatments for the same condition. The Acting Comptroller General of the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced the appointment of 19 members to the PCORI Board of Governors on September 23, 2010.

ACA directs the Comptroller General to appoint 19 of the 21 members of the PCORI Board of Governors. In addition to the 19 members already appointed, the Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will also serve on the PCORI Board.

Members of the Board have been appointed for a six-year term and may be reappointed for one subsequent six-year term. The terms of this first set of PCORI board member appointments are staggered, set at two, four, and six years.

Commissioners whose first term will expire in September 2016 are:

• Eugene Washington, MD, MSc, Vice Chancellor, UCLA Health Sciences, and Dean, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles. Dr. Washington will serve as the chair of the PCORI Board of Governors
• Steven Lipstein, MHA, President and Chief Executive Officer, BJC Health Care, a non-profit health care delivery system. Mr. Lipstein will serve as the vice chair of the PCORI Board of Governors
• Christine Goertz, DC, Ph.D., Vice Chancellor for Research and Health Policy, Palmer College of Chiropractic and Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research
• Sharon Levine, MD, Associate Executive Director for The Permanente Medical Group of Northern California, a large multi-specialty group practice within Kaiser Permanente's integrated delivery system.
• Ellen Sigal, Ph.D., Chairperson and founder of Friends of Cancer Research, a cancer research think tank and advocacy organization
• Harlan Weisman, MD, Chief Science and Technology Officer, Medical Devices and Diagnostics, for Johnson & Johnson.
• Robert Zwolak, MD, Ph.D., a vascular surgeon at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and professor of surgery at the Dartmouth Medical School

Commissioners whose first term will expire in September 2014 are:

• Lawrence Becker, Director, Strategic Partnerships and Alliances, Xerox Corporation
• Arnold Epstein, MD, the John H. Foster Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard University School of Public Health, and practicing internist at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
• Andrew Imparato, JD, President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Association of People with Disabilities
• Robert Jesse, MD, Ph.D., Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Health and National Program Director for Cardiology, Department of Veterans Affairs
• Freda Lewis-Hall, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President of the Pfizer Medical Division
• Grayson Norquist, MD, MSPH, Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, University of Mississippi Medical Center

Commissioners whose first term will expire in September 2012 are:

• Debra Barksdale, Ph.D., RN, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill School of Nursing
• Kerry Barnett, JD, Executive Vice President of Corporate Services and Chief Legal Officer, The Regence Group
• Allen Douma, MD, Chief Executive Officer of Empower, LLC, and a member of the AARP Board of Directors
• Leah Hole-Curry, JD, Program Director for the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) program, Washington State Health Care Authority
• Harlan Krumholz, MD, Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale University School of Medicine
• Richard E. Kuntz, MD, Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific, Clinical, and Regulatory Officer of Medtronic, Inc

Visit the U.S. Government Accountability Office website for brief biographies of the PCORI Board of Governors.

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