Scholarship And Policy

Subject Areas | Recent Publications | Recent Presentations | Convenings

Subject Areas

  • Innovation + Access to Medicines: The Program works on critical policy issues related to innovation and access to medicines, including preparing and positioning alternative strategies for advancing access to essential medicines for the developing world and organizing strategic convenings that bring together key stakeholders on these issues.
  • Building a technology trust: Under an NHGRI grant, the Program is exploring the potential of technology trusts. Such trusts might enable collective action by the public sector to pool intellectual property and to cultivate collective norms to harness promising genomic technologies that can yield benefits for the poor and excluded. Various functions for a technology trust are under consideration, from lowering the transaction costs associated with bundling intellectual property to changing norms of research to enhance R&D for neglected diseases.
  • Antibiotic resistance: The Program acts as the Strategic Policy Unit for ReAct, a global network committed to combating antibiotic resistance. The goals of ReAct are to convince policymakers, doctors, scientific and research organizations as well as civil society that action must be taken to tackle the threat of antibiotic resistance. The network also seeks to inform, involve and mobilize communities and to protect their future access to safe and effective treatment of bacterial infections.
  • Strategic philanthropy and civil society: As part of a new Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society, the Program will investigate approaches to strategic philanthropy in global health and undertake projects of policy entrepreneurship on topics of pivotal significance to philanthropy and civil society.
  • Tobacco control: Through regional research and capacity building, this NIH Fogarty project will serve to enable those in Southeast Asia to respond more effectively to the challenge of tobacco use for the long term and on their own terms. This program represents a unique partnership that builds upon the policy reach of the Southeast Asian Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA) regional network and works with the American Cancer Society’s Tobacco Control Surveillance Program.

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Recent Publications

  • "A Supply Chain Analysis of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods for the Horn of Africa: the Nutrition Articulation Project", Commissioned by United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), May 2009
  • So AD, Stewart E. "Sharing Knowledge for Global Health," in "The U.S. Commitment to Global Health: Recommendations for the Public and Private Sectors." Institute of Medicine, May 2009. Online preview available from: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12642
  • Cars O, Högberg L, Murray M, Nordberg O, Sivaraman S, Lundborg CS, So AD, Tomson G. “Meeting the Challenge of Antibiotic Resistance,” British Medical Journal, September 2008.
  • Lewis T, Reichman J, So AD. “The Case for Public Funding and Public Oversight of Clinical Trials,” Economist’s Voice, January 2007.
  • So AD, Rai A, Cook-Deegan R. “Intellectual Property Rights and Technology Transfer: Enabling Conditions for Developing Countries,” commissioned paper for the WHO Commission on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Public Health, April 2005.
  • So AD, “A fair deal for the future: flexibilities under TRIPS,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2004; 82(11): 813.

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Recent Presentations

  • “Reengineering the Value Chain for Global Health: Innovation to Access,” Opening Plenary Keynote, UK Department for International Development/Lancet Meeting on Access to Medicines, Royal College of Physicians (London, United Kingdom)
  • “Global Distributive Justice: Reflections on the Third Use of Dual Use,” Biodefense and Bioethics meeting (SERCEB/Johns Hopkins & Duke, Washington, DC)
  • “Creating an Enabling IP Environment for Neglected and Rare Diseases,” Breakthrough Business Models: Drug Development for Rare and Neglected Diseases and Individualized Therapies (Institute of Medicine Forum on Drug Discovery, Development and Translation, Washington, DC)
  • “Antibiotic Resistance: When Drugs Don’t Kill the Bugs” panel moderator, The Grand Challenges: Energy, Development, and Global Health (Princeton Colloquium on Public and International Affairs, Princeton, NJ
  • “Enabling Conditions for the Scientific Commons,” Technology Development in the Life Sciences: Intellectual Property and Public Investment in Pharmaceuticals and Agriculture (The Earth Institute at Columbia University, New York, NY)

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Convenings

  • “Making Technology Transfer Work for Global Health.” Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy (December 17-18, 2007).
    • As part of “Making Technology Transfer Work for Global Health,” Bob Cook-Deegan (Sanford), Arti Rai (Law), Anthony So (Sanford), and Corrina Moucheraud Vickery (Sanford) presented on various aspects of how the handling of intellectual property rights can influence the workings of technology transfer, particularly to resource-limited settings. Groups ranging from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Health Research Alliance to the Association of American Medical Colleges and University of California, Berkeley’s Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Research Alliances participated in the two-day meeting.
  • “From Peanuts to Plumpy’Nut: Creating a Value Chain for Enabling Affordable Access to Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTFs). Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy (September 28, 2007).
    • As part of the Program's conference "From Peanuts to Plumpy'Nut: Creating a Value Chain for Enabling Affordable Access to Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTFs)," representatives of Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, the Full Belly Project, USAID's Peanut Collaborative Research Support Program, Partners in Agriculture, and the UNC Center for Infant and Child Feeding converged on the Sanford Institute to discuss the challenges in producing food supplements to combat severe malnutrition among children. One of these supplements, Plumpy'Nut, has made it possible to treat these children in community rather than hospital-based settings in various Sub-Saharan African countries. Participants discussed topics ranging from designing efficient peanut shellers and testing for toxic aflatoxin in peanuts to the challenges of local production. The group focused on developing policy recommendations to scale up production of affordable, high quality food supplements.
  • “Enabling Innovation for Global Health.” Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy (May 3-4, 2007)
    • The Program's two-day policy convening titled “Enabling Innovation in Global Health” brought together international experts on topics ranging from pooling of intellectual property to humanitarian licensing, from new financial arrangements to providing incentives to open source science, the meeting laid out an alternative agenda for health technology innovation and access, particularly for developing countries. Dr. Suwit Wibulpolprasert, Senior Advisor to the Health Minister of Thailand, opened the conference with timely reflections on the country’s use of compulsory licensing to ensure affordable access to drugs for patients. The conference received support from the Open Society Institute, the Duke Center for Public Genomics, and the Duke Global Health Institute.
  • “Enabling Effective Pharmaceutical Procurement,” Open Society Institute, New York City (July 27-28, 2006)
  • “Collective Action and Proprietary Rights: Promoting Innovation and Access in Health,” Duke Law School (March 4-5, 2005)

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