Joseph M. Betz, Ph.D., retired from the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) on December 31, 2022, and now serves as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) special volunteer. Dr. Betz was appointed Acting Director of the ODS in June 2018 and served in this capacity until his retirement.
When Congress directed establishment of the Analytical Methods and Reference Materials (AMRM) program, Dr. Betz joined ODS in 2002 to manage the new program. As the first AMRM director, he oversaw the implementation of several large intra- and extra-governmental initiatives that provided rugged, validated analytical methods and reference materials for measuring natural products in research, industrial, and regulatory settings.
Before joining ODS, Dr. Betz was Vice President for Scientific and Technical Affairs at the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA), and before that he worked for more than a decade as a research chemist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
Dr. Betz is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He is a member of the American Society of Pharmacognosy and a fellow of AOAC International. He also is past chair of the Editorial Board for the Journal of AOAC International and a member of the United States Pharmacopeia’s Expert Committee on Dietary Supplements. He served on an expert scientific advisory committee for the government of Canada and currently serves on the International Advisory Board for the Hong Kong Department of Health’s Chinese Medicine Division and as an elected member of the American Botanical Council’s Board of Trustees.
The author or co-author of more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, Dr. Betz has earned numerous awards, including the American Botanical Council’s first Norman R. Farnsworth Award for excellence in Botanical Research, the American Herbal Product Association’s (AHPA) Herbal Insight Award for contributions to the Botanical Sciences, the AHPA Lifetime Achievement in Collaboration Award, AOAC International’s Technical Division on Reference Materials (TDRM) Reference Material Achievement Award and Harvey W. Wiley Award, the American Society of Pharmacognosy’s Varro E. Tyler Prize for outstanding scientific contributions to the broad field of dietary supplements with special emphasis on botanicals, and the Natural Health Product Research Society of Canada’s G.H. Neil Towers Award. He was recognized by the NIH Office of the Director with an Honor Award for his contributions to the establishment and development of the ODS Vitamin D Standardization Program.
A native of Philadelphia, Dr. Betz earned his B.Sc. in biology and his Ph.D. in pharmagnosy from the University of the Sciences and his M.Sc. in marine and environmental science from C.W. Post/Long Island University.