NIH panel on ART guidelines changes leadership

The NIH announced recently that Roy M. Gulick, MD, MPH, and Martin S. Hirsch, MD, have been named co-chairs of the Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents.

John G. Bartlett, MD, will retire from the panel at the end of this year. He has held the position of co-chair since the panel’s creation in 1996.

“Dr. Bartlett was instrumental in the development of the Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents, and in that capacity helped to establish the nation’s first HIV treatment guidelines,” Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a press release. “His leadership has been highly valued, and he will be sorely missed.

Anthony S. Fauci

Gulick is a professor of medicine and chief of the division of infectious diseases at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He served as a panel member from 2002 to March 2013. Hirsch is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health and a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. He served on the panel from 1996 to 2012.

“Throughout their careers, Drs. Gulick and Hirsch have made substantial contributions to the knowledge base underpinning HIV treatment guidelines,” Jack Whitescarver, PhD, director of the NIH Office of AIDS Research, said in a press release. “Through their leadership, the Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents will continue to set the tone for HIV treatment in the United States.”

The panel is a working group of the NIH Office of AIDS Research Advisory Committee. It comprises approximately 40 representatives from the NIH, CDC, FDA and the Health Resources and Services Administration, as well as scientists, clinicians and community representatives. The panel regularly updates HIV treatment guidelines based on advances in HIV therapy.