Access to Medicines Project-in-a-Box

Improving Access to Medicines in Developing Countries:

What can you do at your university?

An estimated ten million people—most of them in developing countries—die needlessly every year because they do not have access to existing medicines and vaccines. Countless others suffer from neglected tropical diseases, such as sleeping sickness, lymphatic filariasis, and blinding trachoma, for which there are still too few safe or effective medicines. In both cases, respectively known as the access and research gaps, universities are well-placed to make a difference. University scientists are major contributors in the drug development pipeline.  At the same time, universities have an avowed commitment to advancing the public good. As medical students and AMSA members, we have a unique opportunity to affect these problems by calling attention to our universities’ responsibilities when it comes to essential medicines.

This project-in-a-box is designed to help you hold one or more of the following:

• a lunch talk,
• a campaign to raise awareness of these issues, or
• a teach-in to both educate other students about the problems of access to medicines and plan ways with other students to advocate for change at your university.

You don’t have to jump into all of them at once – you can start small and see how it goes. The important thing, if you feel passionate about improving access to lifesaving medicines, is to get started.

 The first step is to learn more about access to medicines.

The attached slideshows will help explain more of the details; these slideshows are also ready to be used as presentations to other students in your AMSA chapter.

Slide shows: (open with Microsoft PowerPoint or with OpenOffice Impress, available at OpenOffice.org)

• Intro to the Access Gap and the Role of Universities
• Intro to Humanitarian Licensing
• Intro to the Research Gap

These slideshows include information about the issues, as well as some information on what your AMSA chapter can do. In addition, they include information on what some students have done at other universities.

Three important text files are also attached:

• AMSA Principles on Pharmaceuticals and Int’l Health
• This is an excerpt from AMSA’s “Preamble, Purposes, and Principles” document, explaining AMSA’s official position on this subject.
• Learning More About the Access and Research Gaps; a bibliography
• This is a list of relevant articles from a wide variety of publications that approach the problems impeding access to essential medicines from different angles.
• Information on Access Organizations
• This is a short list of organizations and their websites where you can go to get more information on these topics.

Download all of the above text files and slideshows as a .zip file.

The rest of this document outlines how to do the three activities above (a lunch talk, a campus campaign, and a teach-in).

Before getting into details, here is a list of included files that will help with these events:

• Text files:
• AMSA resolution
• Sample letter to administration from students
• Sample letter to administration from faculty
• Sample resolution for student assemblies
• A Resolution passed by the U of Pennsylvania Medical Student Gov’t
• Sample Petition
• Sample op-ed for your school paper
• Sample teach-in agenda

• Slide shows: (open with Microsoft PowerPoint or with OpenOffice Impress, available at OpenOffice.org)
• Intro to the Access Gap and the Role of Universities
• Intro to Humanitarian Licensing
• Intro to the Research Gap

These slideshows include information about the issues, as well as some information on what your AMSA chapter can do. In addition, they include information on what some students have done at other universities.

Holding an event within your AMSA chapter on the topic of access to essential medicines  

• Holding a lunch talk on the topic of Access to Essential Medicines
• Holding a series of events/meetings to advocate for greater access
• Holding a teach-in
• Places to go for more information

 Doing a lunch talk:

If possible, arrange for a speaker at your medical school to do a presentation. Presenting faculty members could be from the Infectious Disease department, but anyone with international experience or another interesting angle on the worldwide problems of infectious diseases would work. People that have had personal experience combating these diseases can really personalize the urgency of the problem in a way statistics often can’t.

If no outside professor is available, you can consider doing the lunch talk on your own. Below are several slideshow presentations that are ready to be used as they are. However, your presentation will be even more effective if you find out information about your own school and plug that into your presentation.

 Organizing a campus campaign:

If you have a group of AMSA members that are initially willing to put in more time than just attending an AMSA lunch, you can do some of the following projects:

• Write a letter to the administration from your AMSA chapter (sample)
• Draft a letter to your school’s administration and collect faculty signatories (sample)
• Write a resolution to submit to your school’s student assembly (sample)
• Create a petition (paper or online) and collect student signatories (sample)
• Write an op-ed to submit to your school paper (sample)

Doing a teach-in:

Your teach-in can involve any or all of the above projects, plus more in-depth education sessions on the issue of access to medicine. The slideshows and sample agenda below will give you a place to start.

A teach-in is an excellent opportunity to recruit other professional and graduate students as well as undergraduates at your university for a broader campus campaign.

Make contact with international health groups at the undergraduate level or at your school of public health. You can also try contacting international law interest groups or public interest law groups at the law school.

If possible, ask a professor to speak as part of the teach-in. This can be a professor from the medical school (as described in the lunch talk above) or it could be an economist or professor of intellectual property law, as these faculty have proven effective speakers at other universities’ teach-ins on this subject. If the chief audience is medical students, the talk should be aimed at a medical student audience or a general audience and should not use language that assumes knowledge of law, economics, etc.

A teach-in should include frequent breaks and as much interactivity as possible. Often it’s a good idea to have some sessions in larger groups and some in smaller groups, depending on how many people attend and how many facilitators (i.e. you and other AMSA members) can run small-group activities.

The activities listed under ‘Organizing a campus campaign above’ could serve as concrete ways to follow up on the teach-in.

Your AMSA chapter can consider applying for a Local Project Grant to carry out the teach-in. You can apply online and also request funds for a broader project. Keep in mind, though, that LPGs can’t be used for food, travel, or speaker honoraria. The LPG could cover room rental or printing and publicity expenses, for example.

Other helpful sources of information on general global health issues (i.e. not necessarily this specific project) include national AMSA leaders, like the AMSA Global AIDS Fellow, or the members of AMSA’s Global Health Action Committee.

Please take a look at the attached files (click here to download the entire project-in-a-box as a .zip file), and please email us if you have an event on access issues to tell us whether this Project-in-a-Box was helpful. Don’t hesitate to contact us for more information, and good luck!

Compiled by Ben Bryner, University of Michigan Medical School
and Dave Chokshi, University of Pennsylvania Medical School

Please contact us for more information at: bbryner@umich.edu or daveash@med.upenn.edu