According to recent media reports, President Obama intends to name New York City's former health commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, and Baltimore health commissioner Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein to run the Food and Drug Administration. With this decision, the White House puts the country’s health regulation in the hands of two experienced doctors.

Dr. Margaret Hamburg, 53, and Baltimore Health Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein, 39, have been talked about for weeks as the leading candidates for the FDA's top two spots. Sharfstein is expected to be named Hamburg’s deputy.

Sharfstein, who grew up in Montgomery County, has been involved in health policy since his training at Harvard Medical School. Before becoming Baltimore's health chief in 2005, he served as health policy adviser to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., a congressional health leader.

Hamburg served as an assistant health secretary during the Clinton administration. Hamburg is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. She is known as a the chief health officer of the nation's largest city during the early 1990s, when she designed a program that cut high rates of drug-resistant tuberculosis, helped introduce smoking restrictions and supported programs to help fight the AIDS epidemic. Due to her efforts in the field of community health, she is recognized as an expert in the domain of health and bio-defense in which she worked as the city’s health commissioner from 1991 to 1997.
Hamburg works at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which tries to cut the threat from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.