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# Califf Touts New Duke Center
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/califf-touts-new-duke-center/
- Published: 2017-06-28T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T22:31:59.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: FDA Policy/General, #legacy-id-D5139055

Former FDA commissioner **Robert Califf** says he returned to Duke University to be part of “an infectious excitement surrounding the topic of health data science and what it can do for health and healthcare.” Writing in an online blog [post](https://healthdatascience.duke.edu/blog/new-center-duke?ref=fdaweb.com), Califf says the university has created a campus-wide center “designed to work across a spectrum spanning discovery science, social science, clinical research, and clinical delivery of healthcare, with the goal of developing powerful approaches to turning data into useful information and knowledge and acting on that knowledge to improve health and healthcare.”

Califf notes that for the first time since 1918, national life expectancy is declining rather than increasing. It is possible, he writes, to use county-level data on life expectancy and mortality rates for specific causes of death to get a sense of problems facing the healthcare system. The new Duke center, he says, will address the question of how to move beyond academic analyses and produce compelling knowledge that can be acted upon by patients/consumers and health systems, ultimately leading to better health.

“Our new center is specifically intended to avoid creating another competing structure,” Califf concludes. “We will work with the dozens of schools, departments, centers, and institutes already engaging in this work, bringing people together both inside and outside of Duke for common purpose.”