Medicine Grand Rounds 2024 Blythe Lecturer- Dr. Josie Briggs presents: “Uncertainty and the Practice of Evidence-Based Medicine”

Dr. Josephine Briggs is an internationally recognized nephrologist and researcher.

She is a graduate of Radcliffe College and Harvard Medical School and did post-graduate internal medicine and nephrology training at Mount Sinai Medical School in NYC, where she served as the first woman chief medical resident.  Her research training continued at Yale University and the University of Munich. From 1985 to 1997 she was a member of the faculty at the University of Michigan where she was Professor of Internal Medicine, Professor of Physiology and Associate Chair of the Department of Medicine.

She served for approximately 20 years in leadership positions at the National Institutes of Health, including serving as Director of the Division of Kidney, Urology and Hematology in the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases from 1996 to 2007, and Director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the leading U.S. Federal agency for research on integrative and complementary health practices, from 2008 to 2017.  While at the NIH she was the founding director of the Precision Medicine Initiative and founding co-director of the NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory. For six years she was a member of the NIH Steering Committee. From 2019 to 2020, she served as Interim Executive Director of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), and she continues to serve as a consultant to PCORI and Associate Editor for PCORI’s peer review process.

Her research interests include health policy related to kidney disease, chronic kidney disease and circadian regulation of blood pressure and renal hemodynamics.  She is an expert on clinical research oversight and policy.  She has published approximately 220 research articles, book chapters, and other scholarly publications.

She is an elected member of the Association of American Physicians and the American Society for Clinical Investigation and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is a recipient of many awards including the Volhard Prize of the German Society of Nephrology, the Alexander von Humboldt Scientific Exchange Award, and NIH Director’s Award for her direction of the NIH Collaboratory. Dr. Briggs also received the American Society of Nephrology John P. Peters Award in recognition for her wide-ranging contributions to improving the lives of patients and to furthering the understanding of kidney in health and diseases and was also the recipient of the Department of Health and Human Services 2014 Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service, the Department’s highest award.

She served as Editor in Chief of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN) from 2018 to 2023.  During her six-year term, the journal intensified the rigor of its peer review process and established a highly successful Editorial Fellowship program that integrates early career scientists into the editorial review.

She is currently and Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the University of Michigan.