United States Adopted Name - History

History

The USAN Council began in June 1961 after the AMA and the USP jointly formed the AMA-USP Nomenclature Committee. The American Pharmacists Association (APhA) became the third sponsoring organization in 1964, at which point the name of the committee was changed to the USAN Council, and United States Adopted Name became the official term to describe any nonproprietary name negotiated and formally adopted by the Council. In 1967, a liaison representative from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was appointed to serve on the USAN Council. The FDA announced in 1984 that it would discontinue adding drug names to its official list and use the USAN as the established name for labeling and advertising new single-entity drugs marketed in the United States.

Currently, the USAN Council has five members, one from each sponsoring organization, one from the FDA, and a member-at-large. One member is nominated to the USAN Council annually by each sponsoring organization; the FDA nonminates one liaison member annually. The member-at-large is selected by the sponsoring organizations from a list of candidates proposed by the AMA, APhA, and the USP. The five nominees to the Council must be approved annually by the board of trustees of the three sponsoring organizations.