A project of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), the University Report Card uses publicly-available data and university self-reported information to evaluate five key questions:

How and in what ways are universities investing in innovative biomedical research that addresses the neglected health needs of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)?

When universities license their medical breakthroughs for commercial development, are they doing so in ways that ensure equitable access for people in low and middle income countries? Will these innovative treatments be made available at affordable prices?

Are universities empowering the next generation of global health leaders by educating them on the crucial impact that academic institutions can have on global health and access to medicines through their biomedical research and licensing activities?

How are universities promoting transparency in clinical trial results and academic medical publications?

Have universities committed to sharing the intellectual property, knowledge and data from their COVID-19 research in a way that makes these innovations globally accessible, particularly to people in LMICs?

See the latest UK report card here.

“Take Back Our Medicines” (TBOM) is UAEM’s campaign is to ensure an equitable public return (i.e. guaranteed access to affordable medicines) on public investments made in biomedical research undertaken at universities and public research institutions. While about 2/3 of R&D costs are paid by the public, i.e. by taxpayers, and half of all new medicines entering the market originate in universities and public research institutions, publicly funded programmes attach insufficient upstream safeguards or conditions to public funds to ensure accessibility, affordability and availability of medical products resulting from public investments.

Our role is to create awareness about universities’ moral responsibility to manage public research funding they receive conscientiously and in the best interest of the welfare of the public. Our proposed solution is the Equitable Technology Access Framework (ETAF), a policy framework universities can implement into their licensing policies to improve their responsible knowledge stewardship through Socially Responsible Licensing (SRL). ETAF is building on the Global Access Licensing Framework Document (GALF) by adding alternative mechanisms on how universities and public research bodies could deal with their research.

Get started with our TBOM Roadmap.