Kesler & Fda

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Case study Kessler at the FDA helm: streamlining a mammoth The Food and Drug Administration (FDA or USFDA) is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, one of the United States federal executive departments. The FDA is responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the regulation and supervision of food safety, tobacco products, dietary supplements, prescription and over-the-counter pharmaceutical drugs (medications), vaccines, biopharmaceuticals, blood transfusions, medical devices, electromagnetic radiation emitting devices (ERED), cosmetics and veterinary products. This case study is about how David Kessler reinvented FDA. When Dr. David Kessler took over as the commissioner in 1990, FDA was just a typical government organisation. Lengthy bureaucratic procedures, inconsistency, scams, disorganized, disoriented. His first step as the commissioner of FDA was to rejuvenate the tarnished image it had among the general public and restore faith in it. And secondly he took steps to address the problem of lengthy procedures of FDA. Unlike others he took steps to improve the image FDA had instead of addressing the problem of long duration for approvals. I think he went for it because, later FDA acquired congressional approval to bill companies thus attaining financial autonomy. This could have never happened if he hadn’t acted quickly to improve the public image of FDA. So in my opinion it was a wise decision. Decentralization or delegation of authority to lower strata empowered the employees and contributed to faster decision making. Kessler restructured and reorganized the FDA, and upgraded the communication systems and increased the human resource. Before Kessler, agency never enquired about the operations or activities undertaken and the labs were scattered all over the country. Kessler adopted systems approach

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