UNIVERSITIES ALLIED FOR ESSENTIAL MEDICINES NORTH AMERICA CORP
1380 Monroe St NW 218, Washington, DC 20010 www.uaem.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) is a global student-led non-profit organization with chapters at more than 100 universities worldwide including over 30 in the U.S. UAEMs mission is to (1) promote access to medicines and medical innovations where barriers exist primarily by changing norms and practices around academic patenting and licensing, supported by our own independent research, (2) ensure that university medical research meets the needs of people worldwide and actively supports the creation of new needs-based approaches to research and development (R&D) and(3) empower students to respond to the biomedical access and innovation crisis by advocating for the most promising global biomedical R&D system that works for all.

UAEMs mission is to promote access to medicines and medical innovations where barriers exist primarily by changing norms and practices around academic patenting and licensing, supported by our own independent research.

International Public Health/International Health: Access Initiative: One of our most critical campaigns throughout the past year has been the Free the Vaccine for Covid-19 (FTV) campaign, which mobilizes students in North America and across 30 countries to urge their university administrations to adopt and implement global access licensing provisions including the World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed Open Covid Pledge and the Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) that are specific to COVID-19. The global campaign was launched in March 2020 in conjunction with the Center for Artistic Activism with two key goals. 1) To pressure universities, governments and/or pharmaceutical corporations to ensure that all publicly funded diagnostics, treatments and the eventual safe and effective vaccine(s) for Covid-19 would be sustainably priced, available to everyone and free at the point of delivery. 2) To grow the movement and train people with new skills to fight for equitable access to medicines. The campaign is built on our Advocacy Innovation Lab, a methodology that combines social justice organizing and creativity to impact power designed for this unique moment in history. Since its inception, the campaign has had two seasons or cohorts of 300 volunteer trainees of all ages and backgrounds fighting to ensure access to Covid-19 treatments for everyone, everywhere, not just those with the ability to pay. We are in active dialogue with 15 leading research universities who have the power to move the drug development system towards more equitable practices and help curb the pandemic as quickly as possible. Many actions deployed through the campaign have received extensive press coverage, including a Funk Rally in Washington, D.C., that was watched live by over 78,000 people, and a Dolly Parton Jolene/Vaccine parody song viewed by over 300,000 (including Dolly) and featured in national newspapers, all of which has brought much-needed attention to public institutions roles in prolonging--or ending--the pandemic.Further, to support our Free the Vaccine for Covid-19 campaign, on March 2020, UAEM in conjunction with the Student National Medical Association (SNMA), and the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) launched an interactive online advocacy tool that highlights key research universities and institutions receiving taxpayer funds to develop novel diagnostics, therapeutics, and/or vaccines for COVID-19. The tool, by visualizing where public funding is being directed, is designed to be used to hold research universities and institutions accountable to their responsibilities to the public. We are now in the process of finalizing data collection for the launch of the second data set for this tool, which is planned to be released in 2021. The findings of the report and microsite www.publicmeds4covid.org were commended by allies and shared with us how they intended to use the tool for their own advocacy.Our campaign at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to Take Back Xtandi, a publicly-funded prostate cancer drug developed on the campus continues to make very promising advances. Our goal remains to introduce a new University of California (UC) wide licensing agreement that will better protect access to publicly-funded life-saving medicines. Even though the UAEM students at UCLA advocacy efforts have been slowed due to the Covid19, the leadership team has been in ongoing communication with the UCLA administrators including Dr. Mazziotta, the CEO of UCLA Health and the Technology Transfer Office (TTO) Director Amir Naiberg. The team have brought forward alternative proposals including a potential new agreement with the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) (a company backed by UNITAID that would prioritize greater access to medicines and to whom UAEM successfully urged Johns Hopkins to license in 2017). UAEMs team have been meeting regularly with the MPP and UCLA to help support a MOU moving forward. Once an agreement is reached, the next step would be to move to finalize the details of a new policy on access to and affordability of new medicines developed on UC campuses. This would be majorly significant given the huge amount of biomedical innovation driven by the UC system.

International Public Health/International Health: Empowerment Initiative. In 2020, UAEM's Annual North American Conference was held virtually on October 3rd, 2020, hosted by University of Pennsylvania. The theme was Health Equity in 2020: The Power of Student Activism in a Pandemic. More than 300 student leaders from different countries registered for the conference, including Colombia, South Africa, India, Belgium, Korea, Brazil, and more. The conference featured a powerful keynote speech from Linda Mafu, the Head of Civil Society and Political Advocacy at the Global Fund. There were also panel discussions and breakout workshops with a range of topics such as personal narratives on MDR-TB and COVID-19. Participants learned about colonial legacies of racism in healthcare access today, while also reinforcing the importance of clinical trials transparency at universities and how it impacts health equity. Our partners from BP-Weeks of ACRE and Priti Krishtel of I-MAK also joined students for a discussion on Race, Racism and Access to Meds - what we can do. Students also received training in activism covering diverse topics including using creativity and culture to impact power, visioning, power mapping, and relevant follow-through to refine and evaluate negotiating strategies employed at the university and regional level. Our annual conference is the cornerstone of UAEMs efforts to empower students and help create the next generation of student activists who care about health equity and justice in access to medicines. The annual conference represents a key moment when students already active or interested in UAEM meet to exchange experiences and network with NGO representatives, academics and other global health actors. By educating students on substantive issues related to intellectual property and access to medicines, our annual conference serves to foster a well-informed, internationally coordinated membership that helps to grow and strengthen the access to medicines movement. Overall satisfaction with the 2020 conference was high based on an online survey with participants describing the panel discussions, breakout sessions, presentations and Friday evening virtual social network as extremely helpful in engaging and planning their own access to medicines activities.As part of our empowerment initiative, in 2020, UAEM hosted North American Leadership Meeting. The North American Coordinating Committee and Board traveled to Washington, DC to be joined by several rising leaders from the UAEM North American network. One of the key goals of the meeting was to evaluate the progress from the previous year and review our international strategic plan for our upcoming campaigns and focus for the coming year. Our campaigns continue to make important progress with some like the transparency campaign exceeding our goals. UAEM also continued to collaborate with our expanding network in Europe, Brazil, Colombia and other areas, and continued to provide global health leadership opportunities and experience through campus initiatives and service on UAEMs Coordinating Committee, Board of Directors, Global Governance Council and other positions to ensure global UAEM cooperation, collaboration and representation.

Medical Specialties Research: Innovation Initiative: To ensure global equitable access to health technologies, UAEM students in North America and Europe, have been working to develop a new policy framework, which was finalized earlier in 2020. The goal of the "Equitable Technology Access Framework" (ETAF) is to promote global equitable access to health technologies originating at publicly-funded research institutions (PFRIs) by ensuring that medicines and other health technologies are accessible to all at an affordable price. ETAF builds on UAEMs previous policy framework, GALF (Global Access Licensing Framework), and provides guidance on principles for technology transfer. It also addresses three further modes of technology transfer in addition to licensing, namely spin-off companies, Product Development Partnerships and commissioned research. ETAF highlights the social responsibility of publicly-funded research institutions (PFRIs) and makes recommendations for holding PFRIs accountable in ensuring global equitable access to health technologies. As an addition to the Equitable Technology Access Framework (ETAF), UAEM North America students are also working to develop ETAF for Covid-19 along with UAEM Europe to address the unique circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic.UAEM is currently leading another global campaign to push universities towards increased transparency in clinical trials results reporting. In the US, the Transparency Campaign driven by our student leaders across the country, strives to help US universities achieve 100% compliance with clinical trial reporting requirements under the FDA Amendments Act (FDAAA). From the last iteration of the transparency report (http://altreroute.com/clinicaltrials/), we saw a significant shift from some universities. We are in the process of finalizing the data collection for the progress report, which is planned to be launched in spring 2021. Our goals for this progress report are to celebrate the improvements in university reporting rates, while also reminding researchers and the larger public why this issue is important, using the COVID-19 pandemic as one example case.Further, in 2020, the US Report Card team has been working on collecting data for the 2020 Report Card, which serves to measure global equity in biomedical research. The Report Card utilizes publicly-available and self-reported information in order to assess how the top 60 US biomedical research universities are i) investing in addressing neglected health needs of low and middle income countries, ii) whether their licensing policies are socially responsible - in order to ensure accessibility of treatments discovered at these universities, iii) how these universities are empowering future global health leaders to recognize the importance of biomedical research and IP on access to publicly-funded health products and iv) what transparency mechanisms they are implementing. The Report Card is projected to come out in early 2021, and is a critical advocacy tool for chapters to help keep their universities accountable for the ways that their research policies affect global health and access to medicines. Further information can be found at: www.globalhealthgrades.org

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