NIH health-equality advocate retires

The man who has championed the National Institutes of Health’s efforts to advance minority health through research, John Ruffin, is retiring after more than 24 years. His position as director of the agency’s National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) will be filled, in an acting capacity, by Yvonne Maddox, deputy director of NIH’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

The announcement that Ruffin would retire at the end of March was made on 19 March. Ruffin joined NIH in 1990 to lead the Office of Minority Programs that eventually evolved into the Office of Research on Minority Health, and he became the first director of the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities in 2001.

“There is still much unfinished business that we have to accomplish as a nation to achieve health equity. It has been an incredible journey that I have been honored to inaugurate with you,” Ruffin wrote in his retirement announcement. “The time has now come for new vision, leadership, passion and commitment to sustain what you have created through the NIMHD, and to chart the course for the next chapter towards the elimination of health disparities.”