Donate to NCL and help protect workers and consumers

The air is getting chilly, holiday plans are being made, and 2011 is drawing to a close. The end of the year is also a time when many consumers open their hearts and wallets to causes and organizations they believe in. This season, we ask you keep the National Consumers League in mind during your year-end giving.

Read more: Donate to NCL and help protect workers and consumers

Leading consumer, worker advocates honored at 2011 Trumpeter Awards Dinner

The 2011 Trumpeter Awards on October 6 was an incredible night that celebrated the work of Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten for careers serving consumer and worker interests.

Read more: Leading consumer, worker advocates honored at 2011 Trumpeter Awards Dinner

2011 Trumpeter Recipient: Dr. Margaret Hamburg

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg is one of the most powerful and influential voices in public health today , working to protect the safety of the food supply, provide access to safe and effective medical products, and find innovative ways to prevent illness and promote health.

Hamburg became New York City’s acting health commissioner in 1991 after serving just one year as deputy commissioner and a year later was given the job permanently at the 36—making her the youngest commissioner in the city’s history. In New York, Hamburg designed an aggressive tuberculosis control program that lowered the city's TB rate by 46 percent, supported a needle exchange program designed to slow the spread of AIDS, helped boost childhood immunization rates, and developed one of the first programs to prepare the public for a terrorist attack using anthrax or other bio-chemical weapons.

In 1994, Dr. Hamburg became one of the youngest people ever elected to the Institute of Medicine. Three years later, at the request of President Clinton, she accepted the position of Assistant Secretary for Policy and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Dr. Hamburg graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed her residency in internal medicine at what is now New York–Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. She conducted research on neuroscience at Rockefeller University, studied neuropharmacology at the National Institute of Mental Health, and later focused on AIDS research as assistant director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.