scholarly journals Pharmaceutical industry, academia and patient advocacy organizations: What is the recipe for synergic (win-win-win) collaborations?

Respirology ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Rose ◽  
Richard Marshall ◽  
Mark W. Surber
2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 711-733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orla O'Donovan

This article is based on a study that aimed to shed light on the “cultures of action” of Irish health advocacy organizations, and particularly their modes of engagement with pharmaceutical corporations. Debates about what some interpret as the “corporate colonization” of health activism provide the backdrop for the analysis. The empirical dimension of the study involved a survey of 112 organizations and in-depth study of a small number of organizations that manifest diverse modes of engagement with the pharmaceutical industry. The varying modes of interaction are plotted along a continuum and characterized as corporatist, cautious cooperation, and confrontational. Evidence is presented of a strong and growing cultural tendency in Irish health advocacy organizations to frame pharmaceutical corporations as allies in their quests for better health. The analysis of four constitutive dimensions of organizations' cultures of action can reveal the legitimating logics underlying their diverging positions around pharmaceutical industry sponsorship. While the research shows that pharmaceutical corporations have largely succeeded in defining themselves as a philanthropic force and rightful players in Irish health activism, it cautions against a simplistic conclusion that this is evidence of corporate colonization.


Author(s):  
Órla O’Donovan

The profound inadequacies of Western modernist ways of thinking have been revealed by the intimately connected catastrophes of climate destruction, and more recently, the coronavirus crisis. The pandemic has forced us to notice deepening inequalities and has generated troubling questions about its causes, and who and what can be sacrificed in a pandemic. The analysis offered in Evelyn de Leeuw’s essay "The rise of the consucrat" suggests that the particular type of patient advocates she calls consucrats are unlikely to engage in thinking together about these urgent questions. If anything, due to their narrow biomedical focus and alliances with the pharmaceutical industry, they are likely to facilitate catastrophe capitalism. However, within the field of patient advocacy, there is a diversity of ways of thinking, occasionally leading to bitter contention. A number of terms is needed to reflect this diversity. One group of patient advocates who have come to the fore in recent times might be called medical cosmopolitans, or cosmedics, those who are challenging opportunistic catastrophe capitalism during the pandemic and advocating for global access to essential medicines. Forcing us to notice our deep interdependencies and entanglements, the pandemic has revealed how ludicrous it is to think about patients as consumers, and the need to think about and imagine more-than-human patient advocacy.


Author(s):  
S. Yousuf Zafar ◽  
Lee N. Newcomer ◽  
Justin McCarthy ◽  
Shelley Fuld Nasso ◽  
Leonard B. Saltz

The median price of a month of chemotherapy has increased by an order of magnitude during the past 20 years, far exceeding inflation over the same period. Along with rising prices, increases in cost sharing have forced patients to directly shoulder a greater portion of those costs, resulting in undue financial burden and, in some cases, cost-related nonadherence to treatment. What can we do to intervene on treatment-related financial toxicity of patients? No one party can single-handedly solve the problem, and the solution must be multifaceted and creative. A productive discussion of the problem must avoid casting blame and, instead, must look inward for concrete starting points toward improvement in the affordability and value of cancer care. With these points in mind, the authors—representatives from the pharmaceutical industry, insurance providers, oncologists, and patient advocacy—have each been asked to respond with a practical answer to the provocative hypothetical question, “If you could propose one thing, and one thing only, in terms of an action or change by the constituency you represent in this discussion, what would that be?”


2019 ◽  
Vol 155 (8) ◽  
pp. 982
Author(s):  
Sean Singer ◽  
David G. Li ◽  
Arash Mostaghimi

2019 ◽  
Vol 161 (6) ◽  
pp. 967-969
Author(s):  
Neil S. Kondamuri ◽  
Vinay K. Rathi ◽  
Matthew R. Naunheim ◽  
Rosh V. Sethi ◽  
Ashley L. Miller ◽  
...  

Patient advocacy organizations (PAOs) are nonprofits dedicated to benefiting patients and their families through activities such as education/counseling and research funding. Although medical drug/device companies may serve as important partners, industry donations may bias the efforts of PAOs. We conducted a retrospective cross-sectional analysis of the Kaiser Health News nonprofit database to identify and characterize otolaryngologic PAOs (n = 32) active in 2016. Among these PAOs, half (n = 16, 50.0%) focused on otologic diseases, and mean total annual revenue was $3.1 million. Among the 15 PAOs (46.9%) with publicly available donor lists, 10 (66.7%) received donations from industry. Few PAOs publicly reported the total amount donated by industry (n = 3, 9.4%) or published policies for mitigating potential financial conflicts of interest with donors (n = 3, 9.4%). Requiring drug and device companies to publicly report donations to PAOs may help patients, providers, and policy makers to better understand advocacy by these influential stakeholders.


2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 680-687 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susannah L. Rose

Patient advocacy organizations (PAOs) provide patient- and caregiver-oriented education, advocacy, and support services. PAOs are formally organized nonprofit groups that (a) concern themselves with medical conditions or potential medical conditions and (b) have a mission and take actions that seek to help people affected by those medical conditions or to help their families. Examples of PAOs include the American Cancer Society, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the American Heart Association. These organizations advocate for, and provide services to, millions of people with physical and mental conditions — such as cancer, mental illness, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease — via their outreach, meetings, counseling, websites, and published materials. A PAO usually seeks to raise public awareness of a disease’s symptoms, risk factors, and treatment options and promotes research to cure or to prevent that disease.


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