Arthur A. Levin, MPH, is the director of the Center for Medical Consumers. He served as the consumer representative on the FDA Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee from its establishment in 2003 through May 2007. He continues to participate as a consumer expert on these FDA advisory panels by invitation. He is the only consumer member of the New York State Department of Health Healthcare Acquired Infection Reporting Workgroup and wrote the original legislation that mandated public hospital-acquired infection reporting in the state.

From 1998-2000, Levin served on the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Quality of Health Care in America, which issued the landmark report To Err is Human that garnered international attention for its depiction of medical errors as a leading cause of preventable death and injury in the U.S., as well as the Crossing the Quality Chasm Report that set the goals for reforming the nation’s healthcare system.

He has subsequently served on IOM committees that have assessed federal government efforts to improve patient safety in the health systems it manages, reported on the performance of the Office of the National Coordinator for Information Technology, and recommended national standards for systematic evidence reviews and clinical guidelines. In 2009, he was a member of the IOM committee advising the Secretary of Health and Human Services on how to allocate $400 million in stimulus money targeted for comparative effectiveness research.

Levin serves as chair of the National Quality Forum (NQF) Consensus Standards Approval Committee and co-chair of the National Committee for Quality Assurance, Committee on Performance Measurement (CPM). He is a board member of the Institute of Medicine, Board on Health Care Services, the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, Citizens Advocacy Center, THINC, a regional health information project in the mid-Hudson Valley, and the New York e Health Collaborative. He is the consumer representative on the steering committee of the Centers for Education and Research on Therapeutics (CERTS).