Providence physician to chair FDA advisory panel

PROVIDENCE – Dr. Sandra A. Carson, of Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island and The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, has been named chairwoman of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs.
“The rapidly advancing changes in reproductive health research, resulting in expanding therapeutic options for women and their doctors, are so exciting,” Carson said in a statement today.
“My membership on this advisory committee and consulting experiences at the FDA have afforded me the opportunity to experience these changes firsthand. I am flattered and, as always, honored to work with the FDA and its impressive staff.”
A consultant to the device branch of the FDA since 1988, she has been a member of the Reproductive Health Drugs Committee since August 2006, along with a core of 12 other voting members selected for their expertise in specialties including obstetrics and gynecology, endocrinology, pediatrics, and epidemiology or statistics.
The panel evaluates data on the safety and efficacy of investigational and marketed human drugs for use in obstetrics, gynecology and related specialties, then makes recommendations to the Commission of Food and Drugs.
Carson – a physician for more than three decades – is the director of both the Center for Reproduction and Infertility at Women & Infants and the hospital’s Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, as well as a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Brown’s medical school.
Before coming to Providence, she had worked in Houston as an attending physician at Ben Taub General Hospital, The Methodist Hospital and St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, and a consultant at Texas Children’s Hospital; she also had served as a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine and director of the school’s Assisted Reproductive Technology division.
She also has been active for many years in reproductive endocrinology research, securing more than $6.76 million in grant funding since 1982. Her recent projects have included “The Genetics of Familial Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome,” “The Role of COUP-TF II in Endometrial Angiogenesis: Common Pathways for Implantation and Cancer,” and “The Role of Orphan Nuclear Receptor COUP-TF II in Endometrial Biology.”
She has published more than 120 abstracts, 100 peer-reviewed academic and scientific articles, 50 book chapters and five books. She is editor-in-chief of both Journal Watch, Women’s Health (from the publishers of the New England Journal of Medicine) and Sexuality, Reproduction and Menopause; associate editor of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology; and serves as a reviewer for seven other publications.
In addition, Carson is active on local and national committees. She is director of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology; serves on the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development’s Advisory Council and the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology’s Board of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility; and co-directs the Oocyte Donor Oversight Committee of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, also known as the California Stem Cell Institute. She also is immediate past-vice president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a past president of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.
Her honors include having been named to the Metropolitan Who’s Who Registry and National Registry of Who’s Who, twice to the National Registry of Who’s Who in American Medicine, and to Strathmore’s Who’s Who every year since 1999. She has been ranked by Good Housekeeping magazine among its 100 Top Physicians for Women, and she has been honored by the Northwestern University Department of Obstetrics-Gynecology with the Byford Award, given each year to an outstanding alumnus or alumna.
Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island – a member of the Care New England health care network and the Brown University Medical School’s primary teaching affiliate for obstetrics, gynecology and newborn pediatrics – is the 10th largest obstetrical service in the country, with more than 9,000 deliveries per year. In 2003, it has been named a National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. To learn more, visit www.womenandinfants.org.