President Donald Trump announced his nomination of Heidi Overton, MD, PhD as the commissioner for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Overton would replace Dr. Marty Makary who resigned in May 2026. Kyle Diamantas, JD, has been serving as acting commissioner.
Overton is a physician and health care policy leader currently served as deputy assistant to the president for Domestic Policy at the White House. As a senior health care advisor to Trump, she oversees health care and public policy and works closely with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Overton brings a combination of clinical medicine, scientific research, federal and state health care policy and executive leadership to the position. She is board-certified in general public health and preventative medicine and earned her PhD in clinical investigation from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed a surgical oncology research fellowship at Johns Hopkins and trained as a general surgery resident. She earned her medical degree from the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.
Before returning to the White House, she served as chief policy officer at the America First Policy Institute and vice chair for the Center for a Healthy America. During the first Trump administration, she served as White House Fellow in the Office of American Innovation and the Domestic Policy Council.
However, as reported in several media outlets, she faces scrutiny over vaccines, abortions and the recent cyclospora outbreak.
The American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) and Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA) responded to Overton’s nomination.
“AHPA supports Dr. Heidi Overton’s nomination for FDA Commissioner. As a physician with a Ph.D. in clinical investigation, Dr. Overton has helped lead CBD policy at the White House Domestic Policy Council,” said Graham Rigby, president and CEO of AHPA. “In our engagement with her, AHPA has found her committed to strong scientific principles alongside a pro-innovation posture. When contributing to the development of policy for full-spectrum CBD products, she consulted not only scientific literature but also key industry resources, including the AHPA Hemp Lexicon. Her work on crucial hemp and CBD policy demonstrates a clear commitment to health, science, and patient access to health-promoting products. We believe Dr. Overton’s leadership will help protect consumer safety and foster innovation as the FDA considers industry input on critical issues—especially expanding the scope of dietary supplement ingredients, a topic on which AHPA and other industry representatives provided extensive comments at the agency’s public meeting earlier this year.”
“The Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA) welcomes the nomination of Dr. Heidi Overton to serve as Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,” said Scott Melville, president and CEO of CHPA. “Dr. Overton has extensive experience in medicine, public health, and health policy, and we are encouraged by expressed interest in expanding Rx-to-OTC switch opportunities, increasing consumer access to self-care options, and exploring ways to bring innovative health care products to market more efficiently. Her public support for policies that promote competition, affordability, transparency, and informed consumer decision-making reflects the important role self-care can play in helping Americans take greater control of their health. We look forward to learning more about Dr. Overton’s priorities as she moves through the confirmation process, and we are pleased the Administration is moving quickly to appoint a permanent leader of the FDA. Stable, science-based leadership is essential to a smooth-functioning FDA.”
