Dr. Rik Mehta is a biotech entrepreneur, healthcare policy expert, small business owner, licensed pharmacist, and attorney. 

 

Most recently, Rik was Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance at Aquestive Therapeutics after his position at Pfizer as Head of US Regulatory Policy, PCH.

 

Rik served as the former District of Columbia Senior Deputy Director, Health Regulation & Licensing Administration and the Interim Executive Director, Board of Medicine.

 

Rik served as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Deputy Director for the Division of Medical Policy Programs at the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), Office of Medical Policy. As Deputy, Dr. Mehta created and led the Nonprescription drug Safe Use Regulatory Expansion(NSURE) Initiative exploring regulatory methods to alleviate the undertreatment of common conditions or diseases through the use of innovative technologies or other conditions of safe use to expand access to medications. 

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Dr. Mehta started his FDA career in CDER, Office of Compliance (OC), where he worked primarily on the Agency's unapproved drug initiative. His responsibilities included ensuring industry compliance for the drug approval process, better patient access to safe and effective medicine. 

 

Following this work, Dr. Mehta served on detail as Senior Advisor for Globalization.  In that role, he advised a working group that published the Commissioner’s Special Report on the Pathway to Global Product Safety and Quality.  Dr. Mehta was also involved in creating a new sub-office within CDER’s Office of Compliance focused on drug security, integrity and recalls to work on domestic and international policies related to supply chain security and anticounterfeiting.  In this position, he enhanced the programmatic mission for global supply chain security by working on a 6-month tour of duty at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland to further elements of a global surveillance system for detecting and reporting counterfeit drugs.  

Dr. Mehta served as an FDA technical advisor to INTERPOL and member of their coordination committee for a week-long operation called Operation Pangea IV.  This operation involved the coordination of 81 countries and resulted in multiple arrests and the seizure of 2.4 million potentially harmful medicines worth USD 6.3 million worldwide.

 

Prior to FDA, Dr. Mehta worked as a drug store pharmacist as well as an emergency room/critical care pharmacist at a university hospital. 

 

Dr. Mehta received his B.S. in pharmacy from Rutgers University and Pharm.D. from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.  He later received a J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law and a Master of Laws in Global Health Law and International Institutions through a joint program with Georgetown University Law Center and the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

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Dr. Mehta is originally from Houston, Texas and lives in the New Jersey with his wife Reema, sons and his dog Dexter.

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