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The ‘End of the Beginning’ of
Biomedical Research
Raynard
Kington takes his place in the ‘bigger picture’ as
NIH deputy director
 Raynard
Kington was a young medical student in Michigan’s Inteflex Program
in the late 1970s, thinking about a career in anesthesiology, when he had a
conversation that opened his horizons.
“Dr. Sheagren was the chair of medicine at the VA and the director of
the Division of Infectious Disease at U-M. He was an extraordinary man. He
took the time to talk to me about careers and tell me that I had the potential
to do good things,” Kington recalls. “The entire Inteflex staff
was very good at allowing students to think broadly about their careers. I
spent the first two summers doing internships on Capitol Hill. And it was then
I knew I was interested in public policy, the bigger picture.”
Due, in part, to Sheagren and Inteflex, there may be one less anesthesiologist
in the world, but Kington was recently named deputy director of the National
Institutes of Health.
The path from Michigan, where Kington earned his M.D. in 1983, to the halls
of the NIH is one dotted with distinguished accomplishments. He completed his
residency at the Michael Reese Medical Center in Chicago and a fellowship at
the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical
Scholar and also completed his masters in business administration, as well
as a Ph.D. in health policy and economics. From 1990-97, he served on the faculty
at UCLA while part of a think tank at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica.
“I began to get more interested in socioeconomics and race and how they
impact health and health care, particularly aging in the African American community” says
Kington, who went to the Centers for Disease Control in 1997 to spend two years
studying the demographic differences in health status. Then the NIH called.
In September 2000, he was named the NIH associate director for behavioral
and social sciences research and, for most of 2002, he added duties as acting
director for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. It was
during this time that Kington oversaw the release of a major — and much-discussed — report
on college drinking. “This was one of the few reports to look at the
entire country and try to estimate the burden on America of college drinking.
It helped us to set a research agenda on how to address this.”
In his new position, Kington helps oversee all 27 institutes and centers at
the NIH, setting policy in a wide range of research fields — everything
from alcohol abuse to cardiology, cancer, and complementary and alternative
therapies. He does not hide his pride in the Institutes.
“This is a system that is tapped into the creativity of scientists experimenting
in universities and academic centers across our country. Our goal is to promote
new paradigms of research that are more consistent with how and where science
is now. We’re thinking of ways to create new interdisciplinary teams — to
share resources.”
He adds that, with the celebration of the 50th anniversary of James Watson
and Francis Crick’s 1953 paper on the double helix and the recent completion
of the map of the human genome, “there could not be a more exciting time
to be working in biomedical research. Some people call this the ‘end
of the beginning,’” says Kington. “We have taken this extraordinary
step but are a long way from understanding how the genome works, how we go
from a number of functional genes to a human. How environment interacts. We’re
figuring out a few more glimpses into the complexity of the human body. It’s
finally, as we like to say, ‘getting into the mind of God.’ And
in areas of behavior and social research, we’re beginning to understand
how we can use behavioral and social science to get people to stop smoking
or to engage in safer sexual behaviors, how the community context affects whether
or not a kid gains weight and becomes obese. [Across the gamut of science]
we have a lot of work to do. And I look forward to making whatever contribution
I can.”
Kington looks back fondly upon his education at Michigan, including four years
in East Quad, but admits he has one strong regret — and some advice for
Michigan medical students. “When I was a student there, I walked by the
Institute for Social Research many times. One of the premier population research
centers was right there and I didn’t know it! There are extraordinary
resources at Michigan. You have to take advantage of that and look around.
Go to seminars and explore. I’d particularly encourage minorities. We
need a diverse research community. Being at Michigan is a great opportunity
to see the best in science that there is. It doesn’t get much better …”
—WH
Also:
Raynard Kington takes his
place in the ‘bigger picture’ as NIH deputy director
The Emergence of Emergency Medicine
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