Guiding a Quiet Revolution in Medical Care

As president of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, Linda Suydam ’69 is just where she likes to be—at the nerve center of a powerful organization, overseeing a complex set of issues and policies.

Words by Tracey Regan

Suydam

As president of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, Linda Suydam ’69 is just where she likes to be—at the nerve center of a powerful organization, overseeing a complex set of issues and policies.

Indeed, the Washington-based trade group she heads, which represents the over-the-counter drug industry, is a key player in a quiet revolution in medical care. As the cost of health care skyrockets, cash-strapped consumers are increasingly seeking the affordable medicines that are readily available to them on the shelves of their local drugstore, while hoping to avoid expensive office visits.

Linda said it is her mission to deliver these medicines safely and effectively.

“The public in general is pushing for more and more control over their own health care. People want more choice, and they want convenience,’’ noted Linda, who joined the trade association in 2002 after a 21-year career at the Food and Drug Administration, where she rose to become senior associate commissioner, the highest-ranking, non-political position at the agency.

Shortly after taking her new job, she established the Consumer Health Education Center, a source of information on the Internet, among other outlets, to explain how best to understand and use the increasingly complex medicines available over the counter. While it is routine to buy medicines for conditions ranging from allergies to heartburn without a prescription, the over-the-counter industry is now also looking to address more subtle and complicated conditions such as high cholesterol and osteoporosis.

“What we’re selling is real medicine, and with real medicine, there is real risk,’’ Linda said, noting that the association is currently working with the FDA, for example, to determine what levels of cold medicines are safe for the youngest children.

By her own admission, she never shies away from a managerial challenge.

“I love running things, and the more complicated the organization, the better,’’ said Linda, whose career at the FDA saw such highlights—and battles, in some cases—as approvals for the first nicotine-replacement products, mandatory food and nutrition labeling, and efforts to speed up review times for life-saving drugs such as antiretroviral medications to treat HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.

She spent her first decade at the FDA helping to build the new medical device division—authorized by Congress in 1976, shortly before she joined the agency—following widespread problems with the Dalcon Shield, a birth-control device. She later moved to the commissioner’s office, where her oversight duties expanded dramatically. She recalled with a laugh the time that then-Commissioner David Kessler was battling to bring tobacco under the agency’s regulations and told her bluntly, “I’m managing tobacco. You manage everything else.”

Linda has several graduate degrees, including a doctorate in public administration, but she said her master’s in counseling “is the degree I use most, because when you’re running an organization, counseling skills are the best thing.’’
She began her professional life as a social worker, with the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services, and the social worker in her still pounces on occasion. When she learned, for example, that teenagers were taking over-the-counter cough medicine to get high, she acted immediately.

“I decided to dive right in and fix it,’’ she said, adding that she formed partnerships with groups such as Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America and devised an informational toolkit for communities to apprise teachers, retailers, parents and young people of the problems associated with the practice.

Her first experience as “president of something’’ was at TCNJ, where she led the College Union Board, the group that plans social and cultural activities on campus, her junior and senior years. Under her leadership, the board inaugurated a lecture series that brought storied figures such as historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and civil rights leader Julian Bond to campus.

“I remember introducing Arthur Schlesinger. It was one of the highlights of my time at TCNJ,’’ she recalled.