CQ WEEKLY
Dec. 8, 2012 – 12:41 p.m.

Health: McConagha

As the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee began marking up President Barack Obama ’s health care proposal in the summer of 2009, it borrowed a Food and Drug Administration attorney, William A. McConagha. He stayed on to help the chairman, Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin , draft provisions of the 2011 food safety overhaul and of the FDA user fee reauthorization, which became law last July.

McConagha now has joined Sidley Austin as partner in the law firm’s food, drug and medical-device practice. He is based in the Chicago firm’s Washington office.

Including his time on detail to Capitol Hill, McConagha, 45, was employed by the FDA for more than 17 years. He says he’s not sure whether he’ll lobby the Hill for clients but says he will help design their legislative strategies.

Allison E. Durham

After several years as research assistant for a Tennessee-based lobbying firm, the Ingram Group, and for its Washington arm, the First Group, Allison E. Durham enrolled in a master’s degree program in microbiology and immunology at Georgetown University. Earlier this year, she got a health fellowship in the office of Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia, who was an obstetrician before he was elected to Congress.

Now Durham, 26, has been hired as a public policy specialist for FaegreBD Consulting, a lobbying and communications firm well known in health policy circles. She is focusing on ways to get industry and colleges to collaborate on research. “With the budget as it is,” Durham says, “there’s been a growing trend of collaboration between industry groups and different academic institutions.”

Mary Jo Carden


Story Photo
Carden
 

The Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy, pharmacists who work for managed healt care companies, has hired Mary Jo Carden as director of regulatory affairs. Carden held the same position with Medco Health Solutions Inc., a pharmacy benefits manager that merged with Express Scripts.

Before working for Medco, Carden, 41, ran her own health care policy firm and was a lobbyist for the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists. She is both a lawyer and a licensed pharmacist.