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You are here: Home / Archives for Chapter: US

Binghamton Professor Launches Web Tool to Track Impact of Drugs Worldwide

2015-02-09 By ASAP Global

BINGHAMTON, NY – Billions of dollars have been spent on developing drugs and supplying them around the world, but which companies’ drugs are actually making an impact? The Global Health Impact Index, headed by Binghamton University Associate Professor Nicole Hassoun, addresses this issue by ranking pharmaceutical companies based on their drugs’ impact on global health. ASAP has supported the project since 2011.

Launched on Jan. 23 at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, the Global Health Impact Index considers how companies drugs measure up on the basis of their impact on the “big three” infectious diseases: malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. While previous indexes have measured the need for different drugs worldwide, the Global Health Impact Index is the first to measure the actual impact of these drugs.

“People have focused on measuring the need for different drugs…but we’re looking at the impact that they’re actually having,” said Hassoun. “This is important for setting goals, evaluating performance — trying to have a bigger impact on global health and saving millions of lives.”

The index looks at three things: the need for several important drugs for tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and malaria; the drugs’ effectiveness; and the number of people who can access the drugs. Each company’s score is the sum of its drugs’ impacts.

According to the index, the companies whose drugs having the most impact on the “big three” diseases are:

  • Sanofi
  • Novartis
  • Pfizer

The following companies’ drugs had the lowest drug impact scores on the index:

  • Eli Lilly
  • Kyorin Pharmaceutical Co.
  • Bayer Healthcare

“We are looking at the outcomes of the drugs that the companies hold, so the actual impact on death and disability,” said Hassoun. “We’re looking at the amount of death and disability that the company’s drugs are alleviating.”

Hassoun hopes to motivate pharmaceutical companies to meet the health needs of impoverished people around the world.

According to Hassoun and ASAP, one third of all deaths globally, about 18 million per year, are linked to poverty, because people living in poverty cannot afford medicines and pharmaceutical companies do not have the financial incentive to develop treatments for diseases that primarily affect impoverished people.

By better understanding the impacts of companies’ products on the burden of disease, said Hassoun, researchers can have a tool for measuring impact; governments, donors, etc. can better target their efforts; and companies can be incentivized to focus on impact.

Visit the Global Health Impact Index website or contact Nicole Hassoun for more information.

Filed Under: Announcements Tagged With: Chapter: US, Nicole Hassoun, Project: Global Health Impact Index, Theme: Global Health

Zorka Milin Joins ASAP Team as Director of Research for Financial Transparency

2014-12-30 By ASAP Global

Zorka Milin photoZorka Milin, Legal Adviser to Global Witness, has volunteered to serve as ASAP’s Director of Research for Financial Transparency. In this role, she will seek to identify opportunities for ASAP, as thinkers and researchers, to influence and intervene in policy debates and advocacy campaigns related to financial transparency and illicit financial flows.

Milin is an international tax lawyer, and at Global Witness she works to improve accountability for grand corruption and to advance tax and revenue transparency in the oil, gas and mining sectors. She is a member of the BEPS Monitoring Group of tax experts and represents civil society stakeholders on the tax working group in the US Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. She is also serving as a visiting fellow at Yale University, with the Global Justice Program and with the Information Society Project at the law school. She is originally from Serbia and has practiced international tax law for six years with two major global law firms.

Filed Under: Announcements Tagged With: Chapter: US, Theme: Institutional Reform, Zorka Milin

James Hansen: Climate, Energy, Development, Human Health, and Global Justice

2014-12-16 By ASAP Global

Dr. James Hansen, Director of the Climate Science, Awareness, and Solutions Program at Columbia University and former Director of the NASA Goddard Institute, speaks on climate change and global justice at the conference Justice in Development at Yale University. The conference was co-organized by Academics Stand Against Poverty, Global Financial Integrity, and the Yale Global Justice Program.

Filed Under: Announcements Tagged With: Chapter: US, Global Financial Integrity, James Hansen, Theme: Climate Change, Yale University

Call for Papers on Participation and Climate Governance

2014-03-19 By ASAP Global

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CISDL/GEM Working paper Series on Public Participation and Climate Governance

Call for PapersS

Deadline for submission of abstracts: rolling until May 15, 2014

The Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL) and the Governance, Environment & Markets Initiative at Yale University (GEM) are calling for papers for their new Working Paper Series on “Public Participation and Climate Governance.” The series will be edited by Sébastien Jodoin (GEM / CISDL); Sébastien Duyck (University of Lapland), and Katherine Lofts (CISDL).

The principle of public participation has long been recognized as paramount for effective and equitable climate policy and governance. Article 6 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) thus outlines States’ responsibilities to promote and facilitate, inter alia, education and public awareness, public access to information, public participation, training, and international cooperation with respect to addressing climate change and its effects. The Work Programme on Article 6, initially adopted by the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in 2002, encourages governments, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations to collaborate in matters of access to information and public participation. Under the Doha Work Programme adopted in 2012, a formal dialogue covering access to information, public participation, and public awareness is scheduled to take place in 2014.

With this Working Paper Series on “Public Participation and Climate Governance,” CISDL and GEM aim to encourage new and rigorous research of compelling interest to scholars and policy-makers active in climate law, policy, and governance at multiple levels. Contributions are encouraged from legal scholars, social scientists, and practitioners from several fields, including international law, comparative law, international relations, comparative politics, public policy, political economy/ecology, and environmental studies.

Contributions are most notably sought on the following themes and topics:

  • Analysis of the legal developments, practices and discourses associated with public participation within the UNFCCC and other multilateral fora focusing on climate change;
  • Case studies of the development and application of the concept of public participation with respect to particular sectors and mechanisms of climate governance (mitigation, adaptation, carbon trading, CDM, REDD+, etc.);
  • Case studies highlighting best practices and challenges in the operationalization of the concept of public participation in the policy-making processes and governance mechanisms addressing climate change in particular countries or regions around the world;
  • Analysis of experiences with public participation in other fields of environmental governance and how lessons learned might apply to climate governance;
  • Theoretical and critical reflections on the notion of public participation and the opportunities and challenges it presents for equitable and effective climate governance.

Full papers (ranging between 6,000 and 8,000 words) should be submitted by 15 August 2014. The drafts of the working papers may also be discussed during a session of the 3rd Yale/UNITAR Conference on Environmental Governance and Democracy, “Human Rights, Environmental Sustainability, Post-2015 Development, and the Future Climate Regime,” which will be held in New Haven, Ct., 5-7 September 2014. Prospective authors interested in participating in this conference are encouraged to submit an abstract.

The final versions of the working papers will be posted on the CISDL and GEM websites and will be launched at a side-event organized during the 20th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC to be held in Lima, Peru in November 2014. Selected working papers may also be collected into a book or special journal issue to be published at a later date.

Submissions of abstracts (of approximately 500 words) will be accepted on a rolling basis until 15 May 2014. Authors are encouraged to submit abstracts as soon as possible to ensure paper eligibility and avoid overlap between different papers in the series. While papers should not have been published elsewhere before being submitted to the series, inclusion in the series does not preclude future publication elsewhere.

Abstracts submitted for inclusion in the working paper series should be submitted as Microsoft Word Documents and should include a 500 word abstract and a 50 word biography of the author. All abstracts should be submitted to Ms. Katherine Lofts (CISDL) at klofts@cisdl.org.

Filed Under: Calls Tagged With: Chapter: US, Theme: Climate Change, Yale University

Jeffrey Sachs Speaks on Future of Sustainable Development

2014-02-28 By ASAP Global

Jeffrey Sachs at Yale
Jeffrey Sachs at Yale

The Yale Global Justice Program and ASAP hosted Dr. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University for a special lecture, “Sustainable Development Goals: The Emerging Global Agenda.” Critical responses were given by Dr. Dean Karlan, Professor of Economics at Yale and President and Founder of Innovations for Poverty Action and Thomas Pogge, Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs and Director of the Global Justice Program and President of ASAP.

Videos are available of Dr. Sachs’s lecture, responses from Dr. Karlan and Dr. Pogge, and audience Q&A. Photos from the event are also available.

Dr. Sachs has been a leading figure in the effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, an eight-point framework for promoting poverty alleviation and development worldwide, agreed to by all the world’s countries and leading development institutions. The Millennium Development Goals will expire in 2015, and the framework that replaces them will shape poverty alleviation and development efforts for the next fifteen years. Dr. Sachs’s is an important voice in the global debate over priorities for the next phase in international development.

Dr. Sachs is a world-renowned professor of economics, leader in sustainable development, senior UN advisor, bestselling author, and syndicated columnist whose monthly newspaper columns appear in more than 80 countries.

Dr. Sachs serves as the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals, having held the same position under UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He is Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He is co-founder and Chief Strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, and is director of the Millennium Villages Project. Sachs is also one of the Secretary-General’s MDG Advocates, and a Commissioner of the ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Development. He has authored three New York Times bestsellers in the past seven years: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011).

Filed Under: Announcements Tagged With: Chapter: US, Jeffrey Sachs, Project: Institutional Reform Goals, Theme: Institutional Reform, UN, Yale University

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Established in 2010, Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) is an international community of academics confronting the rules and practices that perpetuate global poverty. Our evidence-based approach provides:

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