Building on NPC’s Commitment to Sound Health Policy Research and Evidence-based Dialogue

By Robert Dubois, MD, PhD, NPC Interim President and CEO

Last week, the National Pharmaceutical Council announced that our longstanding CEO, Dan Leonard, would be taking on a new role. It’s difficult to overstate the impact that Dan has had on both NPC and on me. He brought me to the organization and has been a tireless partner in the effort to ensure that discussions about how medicines are discovered and sold are firmly rooted in data, not ideology.

NPC has never been better equipped to advance good evidence and science. We have a large and distinguished research team, and work every day to create an environment that supports critical discussions about the industry – and the importance of innovative, high-value treatments – not only by being more vocal, but also by infusing a commitment to peer-reviewed research into every debate.

As the interim leader of NPC, I plan to work with our staff on two critical priorities. 

First, we will build on the great work and success that NPC achieved during Dan’s 12 years of leadership by leveraging our tradition of evidence-based research, partnership and education. The need for medical innovation has never been more immediate or concrete. 

NPC’s research must advance an evidence-based dialogue in the United States on important and often difficult issues, now more than ever, in a way that is useful to our member companies, partner organizations and health care decision-makers across the country. 

Second, we will focus on preparing NPC for the future, anticipating some of the key issues we will face in the next year, or the next five years, or the next decade. Our role here is critical; NPC’s ability to ask important questions and define the roadmap to answer them is a role we are well positioned to fill regardless of the what tomorrow’s health care policy needs may be.  

This will not only ensure NPC’s relevance in the conversations of today and tomorrow, it will ensure that our next leader will have the resources and the tools to continue that evolution.

As we continue down that path, I’ll be working with the best staff, members and partners in the industry. We all have a shared belief in the power of evidence-based research to drive decisions about pharmaceutical development. That has been a key to gathering the stable core of industry-leading expertise with a heritage that stretches back to 1953. 

Dan Leonard wrote a dynamic and important chapter in NPC’s long history, and I wish him all the best on his next adventure. At the same time, this group has never been better positioned to shape the future, and I look forward to building the next era of NPC.