Global Access in Action: Conversations in Global Health, Innovation, & the Digital World
Monday, June 26, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Harvard Global Health Institute
42 Church Street, Cambridge MA
Conference Room
RSVP required to attend in person
Join the live webcast here on June 26 at 12pm (please mute your microphone)
Global Access in Action: Conversations in Global Health, Innovation, & the Digital World
This event is being sponsored by the Harvard Global Health Institute and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
Following a rich discussion led by HLS Professor William Fisher this past Monday, we are excited to to announce the second event in our four-part series, "Conversations in Global Health, Innovation & the Digital World" in collaboration with the Harvard Global Health Institute.
Below is a press release on a recent journal article authored by our next speaker, Quentin Palfrey, on practical approaches to increasing global medicine accessibility and encouraging R&D on diseases burdened by the world's most vulnerable populations. The content of the article will be the basis for this upcoming event which is detailed below. We look forward to seeing you there.
_______________________________________
Pharma companies can increase access to medicines and spur new R&D by replicating industry best practices, Harvard team argues in new paper
For release: June 6, 2017
Cambridge, MA - In a newly-published paper in the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy, Quentin Palfrey highlights practical strategies for how pharmaceutical companies can have a profound impact on humanitarian outcomes without undermining profitability of their ventures. The paper, entitled Expanding Access to Medicines and Promoting Innovation: A Practical Approach, was produced in connection with the Global Access in Action project of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard.
“By adopting sensible approaches that have been used successfully by other companies, pharmaceutical firms can increase access to medicines, conduct critical research and development, and continue to be profitable,” Palfrey argues. “Under some circumstances, there are win-win approaches that can help the world’s poorest afford lifesaving medicines, allow philanthropic funders to have greater impact with limited budgets, and allow pharmaceutical programs to run corporate social responsibility programs that cost less – or even make a profit – while increasing impact,” says Palfrey.
The paper argues that pharmaceutical companies should consider expanding three approaches to increasing access to lifesaving medicines for the poor and incentivizing R&D into diseases that primarily affect the global poor. First, the paper explores non-exclusive voluntary licensing partnerships between branded and generic companies as a strategy for distributing lifesaving drugs in the world’s poorest markets. Second, the paper considers various pricing strategies and argues that intra-country price discrimination – charging different prices for similar products targeted at different populations in the same market – can be an effective way of distributing lifesaving drugs to poor communities in countries that have both rich and poor populations. Finally, the paper encourages private firms to take further steps to share the fruits of their research with research collaboratives that seek to develop cures for diseases that primarily affect poor populations, and for which there is often insufficient research funding.
About the Author
Quentin Palfrey is co-Director of the Global Access in Action proj
