Workshops

Conferences and Events

Borderless COVID-19, Restricted Vaccines: Assessing the global pricing of vaccines and treatments

April 20, 2020

As the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) sweeps the world in devastating fashion, scientists are scrambling to develop effective vaccines and treatments. But how should those medicines be priced globally?

Following Donald Trump’s “America First” policy with respect to vaccine and drug pricing would be tragic, argue Quentin Palfrey and John Stubbs. Instead, Palfrey and Stubbs propose a pharmaceutical pricing policy modeled on progressive taxation to distribute costs equitably worldwide. This discussion was moderated by Ashveena Gajeelee.

 

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Drug Pricing Policies in the United States and Globally:

From Development to Delivery

Harvard Law School, October 2018

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This one-day conference explored the current pharmaceutical pricing landscape by bringing together leaders from the pharmaceutical industry, policymakers, legal practitioners, and scholars to engage in novel, interdisciplinary discussions to better understand current challenges and articulate best practices to address these issues. Participants assessed the current challenges presented in drug pricing policy, from development to delivery, in both the United States and international context. We also explored and articulated best practices to expand access to medicines and worked toward developing a plan for disseminating these practices more widely.

Sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, Global Access in Action at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and the Harvard Health Law Society, with support from Gilead Sciences, Inc.

Past Workshops and Conferences

Medicine Access: Best Practices

Pandemic Preparedness

Insights into Action

Date: 8/1/2014

Aim

  • To explore possible ways of improving the existing systems for creating and distributing pharmaceutical products aimed at the diseases common in poor countries
  • To focus primarily on the possibility that intra-country differential pricing could be employed under some circumstances as one of several strategies for advancing that goal, but which also considered some alternative ways of increasing access to medicine among the impoverished populations of developing countries

Date: 7/10/2015

Aim

  • To explore lessons from the recent Ebola outbreak for improving future preparedness for public health crises
  • To find out how drug-development policy  could help stop outbreaks of infectious diseases

Date: 6/13/2016

Aim

  • To lead facilitated conversations focusing primarily on strategies that could be adopted in the near term by industry, nonprofits, and governments that would have the effect of increasing access to lifesaving medicines and increasing incentives to invest in research and development into disease categories that primarily affect the global poor

Participants

45 stakeholders from the pharmaceutical industry, government, international procurement and donor agencies, civil society, and academia.

This workshop report summarizes the principal arguments and suggestions advanced by the attendees.  (The names and affiliations of the participants appear in Appendix B.)

Participants

40 leaders from civil society, academia, international procurement and donor agencies, government, and the pharmaceutical industry. 

A press release was published for the event. 

Participants

More than 60 leaders from the pharmaceutical industry, foundations, civil society, academia, and government. 

This workshop report summarizes the principal arguments and suggestions advanced by the attendees. (The names and affiliations of the participants appear in Appendix B.)