PCORI Board chairperson announces Interim Executive Director

WASHINGTON, DC — Christine Goertz, DC, PhD, Chairperson of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Board of Governors, today announced the appointment of Josephine P. Briggs, MD, as PCORI’s Interim Executive Director, effective Nov. 1, 2019. She will lead the organization during the Board’s search for a replacement for Joe Selby, MD, MPH, who earlier announced plans to retire as Executive Director by year’s end.

Briggs is a nationally recognized nephrologist and health services researcher who currently serves as Editor in Chief of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, the leading journal in the field. She served as Senior Scientific Officer at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and spent nearly 20 years in various leadership positions at the National Institutes of Health, including Director of the Division of Kidney, Urology and Hematology in the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and Director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. 

During her time at the NIH, Briggs led the establishment of several major programs. She was co-leader of the NIH Common Fund Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory, a 10-year effort to conduct pragmatic clinical trials in partnership with clinical investigators and health care systems in the United States. She also was interim founding director of the NIH Precision Medicine Initiative® Cohort Program, now known as All of Us.

“It is a great pleasure to welcome Dr. Briggs’ to PCORI as Interim Executive Director,” said PCORI Board of Governors Chairperson Christine Goertz, DC, PhD. “Her deep research expertise and extensive leadership experience within the research community will be extremely valuable in steering PCORI’s day-to-day activities while we continue the search for an Executive Director to lead the organization in the years ahead.

“As we welcome Dr. Briggs, we also honor Dr. Selby for the remarkable work he has done in taking PCORI from dream to reality, building an organization that has made great strides in transforming the health care research enterprise through investments in patient and stakeholder engagement throughout all aspects of comparative clinical effectiveness research,” she said. “The entire U.S. health care community owes Dr. Selby a huge debt of gratitude for the pioneering work he and his staff have done over the past eight years. We congratulate him on his retirement and wish him all the best.”

Selby brought more than 35 years of experience in patient care, health services research and executive leadership to his role as PCORI’s founding Executive Director in mid-2011. In that role, he has overseen the development of PCORI’s portfolio of more than 700 research projects; stakeholder engagement efforts; infrastructure development; and dissemination and implementation activities. A singular achievement during his tenure has been the development of PCORnet^®, the Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network, a national resource for harnessing the power of health data and stakeholder partnerships to make health care research more robust, efficient and accessible for patients, clinicians and researchers.

“It has been an honor and adventure to have served as PCORI’s founding Executive Director,” Selby said. “It’s a rare privilege to have the opportunity to work with such passionate leaders, dedicated staff and stakeholders from across the health care community to build something completely new and dedicated to making health care more efficient, effective and patient-centered.

“I am grateful and excited to be handing over these responsibilities to such a well-qualified Interim Executive Director as Dr. Briggs,” he said. “She knows PCORI well and has understood and supported its mission from its earliest days.”

”I am delighted to be asked to serve as PCORI’s Interim Executive Director,” Briggs said. “PCORI has had a dramatic and transformational effect on clinical research everywhere. The organization has led the way in emphasizing outcomes that matter most to patients and true patient-centeredness in all it does. I am honored to be asked to take the interim leadership at this time, to prepare for a new Executive Director and to ensure a smooth transition that will build on the extraordinary achievements of the first decade.”

PCORI’s Board began a national search for a new Executive Director when Selby announced his plans to retire. It expects to complete the process by early 2020.

Briggs was a Professor of Medicine and Physiology and Associate Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Michigan before joining the NIH. She completed her residency in internal medicine and nephrology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

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About PCORI

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is an independent nonprofit organization authorized by Congress in 2010. Its mission is to fund research that will provide patients, their caregivers and clinicians with the evidence-based information needed to make better-informed healthcare decisions. PCORI is committed to continually seeking input from a broad range of stakeholders to guide its work.