Quiz Highlights UCSF's Role in National Service

Quick: Which UCSF deans were commissioners of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)? Who was assistant secretary of health under both Presidents Johnson and Clinton? Who's the only Nobel laureate to head the National Institutes of Health (NIH)? Members of the standing-room-only crowd who heard Jeffrey Drazen, MD, deliver the first Chancellor's Health Policy Lecture on April 19 were invited to discover these answers and more in a quiz printed in the lecture program. Contestants were asked to match the people with the positions for nine examples of UCSF's role in the nation's service. Contestants sent their answers in to the lecture planners by email. The Chancellor's Health Policy Lecture Series has been established to bring to the campus several times per year a major figure in health policy to raise awareness in the UCSF community of the important health policy issues of the day. Watch UCSF Today for announcements of the next lecture. The winner, who identified all the names, was John Maa, MD, of the School of Medicine. Sara Burke of the School of Nursing took second place, with eight of nine correct names. Ernest Newbrun, PhD, DMD, of the School of Dentistry earned a tie for second place: He identified seven of nine names, but also added the name of a UCSF leader in national service who hadn't been included on the list. Josh Adler, MD, of the School of Medicine knew the correct answers, but disqualified himself because he had insider information.

Here's the quiz: UCSF in the Nation's Service UCSF has a distinguished record of placing its students and faculty into positions of high governmental responsibility in health. Can you place the people with the positions? 1. Director of the NIH 2. Assistant Secretary of Health (twice) 3. Assistant Secretary of Planning and Evaluation 4. Commissioner of the FDA (two different people) 5. Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 6. US Surgeon General 7. Founding Director of the Health Care Financing Administration 8. President, National Academy of Sciences 9. Newbrun's addition: Commissioner of the Social Security Administration

Here are the answers:

• 1. Harold Varmus, MD, led the NIH from 1993 to 1999. A UCSF microbiology faculty member for more than 20 years, he shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Chancellor Michael Bishop, MD, for their discovery of proto-oncogenes, normal genes that have the potential to convert to cancer genes. Now Varmus is president of Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Center. Read a 1989 autobiography of Varmus here.
  
• 2. Former Chancellor Philip Lee, MD, served as assistant secretary of health under President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s and under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. He was UCSF's chancellor from 1969 to 1972, and co-founded the Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF in 1972. He also served as director of health services for the Agency for International Development, and was the first head of the Physician Payment Review Commission set up by Congress and the first president of San Francisco's City Health Commission. Lee now is professor emeritus of social medicine. Read an interview with Lee here.
  
• 3. Lewis Butler, LLB, served as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare during the Nixon administration. He co-founded UCSF's Institute for Health Policy Studies with Phil Lee. Currently, he is chairman emeritus of the Ploughshares Fund and California Tomorrow, and co-chairman of the Revolt of the Elders Coalition.
  
• 4. School of Medicine Dean David Kessler, MD, vice chancellor of medical affairs, was the outspoken commissioner of the FDA from 1990 to 1997 under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Read about him taking on the tobacco industry as FDA commissioner here.
  
• 5. Jere Goyan, PhD, served as dean of the UCSF School of Pharmacy from 1967 to 1992, but took a 16-month leave of absence in 1979 to lead the FDA. Read more about Goyan here.
  
• 6. CDC Director Julie L. Gerberding, MD, MPH, remains an associate professor of medicine at UCSF. Before taking the position at the CDC, she directed the Epidemiology and Prevention Interventions Center at San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center. Read about UCSF's influence at the CDC in the UCSF Magazine.
  
• 7. Vice Admiral Richard H. Carmona, MD, MPH, FACS, surgeon general of the United States, earned his bachelor of science and medical degrees and completed his surgical residency at UCSF after service in the Army's Special Forces in Vietnam. Read about Carmona's visit to San Francisco here.
  
• 8. Robert A. Derzon, MHA, MBA, LLD, was director and CEO of the UCSF Hospital and Clinics before joining the Department of Health and Human Services Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) as its first administrator in 1977. HCFA now is called the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
  
• 9. Bruce Alberts, PhD, chaired the UCSF Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics until his election as president of the National Academy of Sciences in 1993. An expert on molecular analyses of chromosome replication, he is one of the original authors of the widely used textbook The Molecular Biology of the Cell. He has served on the advisory board of the National Science Resources Center to improve teaching of science, as well as on the National Academy of Sciences' National Committee on Science Education Standards and Assessment. Returning to UCSF in 2005, he resumed his efforts to improve science education through projects such as the Science & Health Education Partnership (SEP) at UCSF, which he had founded 20 years earlier. Read about how Alberts has worked to improve science education or view a video here.
  
• 10. Shirley Chater, PhD, served as commissioner of the Social Security Administration from 1993 until February 1997. Chater earned her master's degree in nursing at UCSF and held joint appointments at UC Berkeley and UCSF for 17 years. She served at UCSF as vice chancellor for academic affairs before becoming president of Texas Woman's University. Currently, Chater is University of California Visiting Professor at UCSF's Institute for Health & Aging and in the School of Nursing's Department of Community Health Systems. Read more here.