On behalf of UAEM North America we are excited to gather next weekend for our annual North American conference, this year to be hosted at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) the hub of our Xtandi campaign in the fight to make a prostate cancer medicine accessible and afforable. Our theme this year is aptly named “LOCAL ACTION, GLOBAL IMPACT: THE FIGHT FOR HEALTH EQUITY AND JUSTICE”.
We are expecting UAEM chapters and members from all across the region as well as colleagues from Brazil and Colombia and even as far as South Korea. Our teams will be coming together to discuss some of the most critical issues in access to medicines and health equity in North America and develop or strengthen organizing skills to help urge universities to licence their health innovations in a socially responsible way - better protecting access to these life-saving, publicly funded products for the public who funded them via their taxes in the first place.
We are also excited to welcome an all time heroine of ours, the inspirational Dolores Huerta, one of the most important activists in the last century and who in 2012, President Obama betowed with The Presidential Media of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the US.
If you're in LA or near by and interested in learning more you can join UAEM NA Board Members, staff, students and guests at our fundraising happy hour on Friday evening. More details here.
Thanks to your support the UAEM NA conference remains a FREE event for our students and for whom we are able to provide limited travel support in order to ensure equal access. If you'd like to learn more about the conference and the speaker line up you can do so here: https://uaem.org/get-involved/uaem-na-2019-annual-conference/
Thanks for your continued support of student activism in the fight for greater health equity and access to medicines.
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Summer has come... and in Europe, seems like it is still on! Between getting over lazy summer days and preparing for a new university term ahead, UAEMers across Europe came together for a leadership meeting in Berlin late August.
During this 3-day meeting, our engaged students renewed their motivation to move the agenda forward when it comes to access to medicines, pledging their commitment to harnessing more grassroots activtities at their local universities. From understanding organising and leadership concepts to developing concrete projects, whilst building on the team spirit, our UAEMers are more than ready to take that further step to impact change that matters for all.
Stay tuned for more exciting news as we prepare for UAEM's Access to Medicines Week in November! Plenty of exciting adventures and activities ahead!
We are pleased to share that in late March UAEM North America, in partnership with TranspariMED, released a critical analysis of U.S. universities’ continued failure to ensure public transparency of the results of their clinical research. In analyzing university compliance with a federal research transparency law, UAEM learned that only 15 of the 40 universities studied were in full compliance and that data for over 30% of trials was still missing. Failure to report clinical trial results in a timely manner has substantial negative consequences for patients and public health, and the significance of the findings was reinforced by media coverage of the release in major outlets including STAT, Nature (the world’s leading science and technology publication), and Endpoints News.
In response to the report and UAEM's broader campaign to urge leading universities to become the first academic research institutions in the world to sign onto the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s Joint Statement on Clinical Trial Transparency, Director-General of the WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated, “We advocate full transparency of which clinical trials are ongoing and ensuring all results are disclosed in a timely manner. This is consistent with the principal goal of medical research: to serve the betterment of humanity. In the case of clinical trials, full transparency on results advances both scientific understanding and timelines for product development and ultimately enables access to essential medicines. We would welcome Universities joining as signatories”.
Immediately after the launch of our report we learned that several of the worst-performing universities called out scrambled to put their clinical trial data into the public domain where it belonged. This is a significant win for student advocacy! Further, some of the leading universities who were 100% compliant are now engaged with our student campaign team taking steps to consider if they can out-do their peers and be the first academic instiutions in the world to sign onto the WHO Statement for clinical trial transparency!
We urge you to explore the data and our microsite linked below to learn how these leading instutions could go further to protect the public and better safeguard access to medicines for the public good!
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What makes UAEM students hustle? Organizing on university campuses to ensure publicly-funded medicines are accessible and affordable to the people who need them!
A week ago we wrapped up a three day weekend in Washington DC composed of campaign strategizing, team-building and advocacy for access to medicines with some donuts, karaoke and even some fitness for good measure. The team who plays together, stays together! This year we saw 24 students participate from chapters across the US and Canada in conjunction with leadership from Europe and Brazil. The weekend commenced with the team making numerous legislative visits and ended with draft plans for our campaigning for the next two years. Our team left motivated and equipped for the months of campaiging ahead.
While the press these days seems to moan about millennials, I can assure you that this group of students are not only hard-working and passionate about the cause they are leading campaigns that make a difference! You can read about one such 23 year old UAEM student, who lead the University of Calgary, Canada to adopt licensing provisions that will ensure any new medical innovation developed on campus will be access and affordable in low and middle income countries.
Your support of UAEM helps us support students like Asha to make a difference where they have power: on their campuses. We are grateful!
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Greetings!
UAEMers all over the globe are as busy as ever - not only pushing for measures on university campuses to protect access and affordability of publicly-funded medicines but also gaining key skills to advocate for access to affordable healthcare over the years to come!
In this report we're sharing some very exciting updates from our North American chapters, specifically via our UAEM North America Fall newsletter (linked here and attached below). We are excited to share that in the last few weeks due to student-driven advocacy not one but TWO Canadian universities have agreed to adopt global licensing principles that will better protect access and affordability of life-saving medicines developed on university campuses with tax-payer funds! This is an incredible acheivement and the first time that a Canadian university has adopted these principles in over a decade! Hurrah!
In the newsletter you'll also learn about the continued push at UCLA to urge the university to drop it's patent claim in India on a prostate cancer drug developed on the campus as well as the success of the first Fall Conference held in Canada.
Because you’ve been part of our work, we wanted to share our successes and growth with you. Our community plays a critical role in realizing our mission, and we are grateful to have you on board. Before you go however, please remember to mark your calendars for Giving Tuesday on November 27th! On this date, there will be matching opportunities for UAEM supporters like you. We are hoping to beat last year's performance and push for 400 unique donations of 10 Dollars/Euros during the 24 hour period. We hope you can join us on that date!
Thank you for your continued support and keep us in mind on Giving Tuesday - your donations go a very long way for grassroots organizations like ours!
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