Global health partnerships involving the biopharmaceutical industry are increasing in number, and importance, within the ongoing effort to achieve universal health coverage in low- and middle-income countries.
These partnerships employ a variety of strategies to improve access to health. Over the past five years, the industry has started to adopt standard approaches to measuring and reporting on their partnerships including through the Access Observatory.
However, key challenges in this area remain, including harmonizing standards with key global health stakeholders to expand the use of collected data and to improve transparency and accountability.
Furthermore, increased investment in measuring and understanding how partnerships work, such as in the science of access, have the potential to catalyze much needed innovation in the design of future access strategies.
This event discusses how to ensure more effective partnerships in this area.
First, two white papers prepared for the event are outlined:
- Towards Harmonizing Measurement Standards of Access Partnerships. Presenter: Veronika J. Wirtz (Professor, Boston University School of Public Health)
- Advancing the Science of Access. Presenter: Peter C. Rockers (Associate Professor, Boston University School of Public Health)
Then a panel of experts discuss key questions:
- What role do, and should, partnerships involving the biopharmaceutical industry play in advancing access to disease prevention and health care in low- and middle-income countries?
- Who are the key stakeholders the industry should be responsive to when measuring and reporting on their access partnerships?
- How is the effectiveness of such partnerships currently assessed, what gaps and challenges remain in tracking the success of these partnerships and what can be done to address them?
- The director-general of WHO recently stated that: ‘Our world is way off track to reach the [SDG] target on UHC’. In the stalled effort to achieve UHC, how should we balance efforts to increase public spending on status quo strategies versus investing in the science of access and social innovation to develop new strategies? And what is the role of the biopharmaceutical industry in advancing the science of access?
