HHS Office of General Counsel Announces Reorganization Effort

The Acting General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Sean Keveney, today announced a reorganization of the Office of the General Counsel (OGC).

As part of the department’s ongoing efforts to advance the Secretary Kennedy’s mission to Make America Healthy Again, OGC will consolidate the number of regional offices from 10 to four. Regional offices will be maintained in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Kansas City (MO), and Denver, which will provide the same geographic support for regional HHS offices at lower operating costs.

As part of reorganizing around Secretary Kennedy’s priorities, OGC has created a senior position, the Chief Counsel for Food, Research, and Drugs. The Chief Counsel will be responsible for supervising the FDA Chief Counsel, including the Food and Drug Division of OGC, and the National Institutes of Health Branch of OGC. Robert Foster, the current FDA Chief Counsel and Deputy General Counsel in OGC, will serve as the Chief Counsel for Food, Research, and Drugs.

"We’ve been able to recruit higher quality personnel to HHS than in any time in its history,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “These are individuals who will return the agency to gold-standard science, evidence-based medicine, and recalibrate its trajectory toward public health rather than industry profiteering.”