Another school year begins for us at UAEM and we're more than excited to keep our momentum going. Since joining UAEM in 2010, I've seen my colleagues do amazing things, from discovering new medical innovations, developing policy ideas to make medicines (and health care) affordable, teaching the next generation of students, and treating patients throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, we find ourselves at a difficult moment for the world of health policy and advocacy. The withdrawal of the United States from the WHO, the cancellation of millions of dollars of international aid through USAID, the loss of NIH funding for biomedical research across universities, and more have presented challenges that we as a collective are working towards together. Nonetheless, we are more energized than ever before to push for the continued breakthroughs of science and technology to be accessible to all, making sure that people are put over profits and that everyone has a right to be healthy.
At the core of our mission has always been our students, and they have gone on to do amazing and incredible things. From presenting to the World Health Organization and working in some of the leading non-profits in the health advocacy space, UAEMers are some of the most resilient and powerful changemakers in the world.
We look forward to continuing our efforts to advocate for a more equitable world where medicines and scientific breakthroughs are made available to all.
For those joining us this year, welcome! For those coming back to UAEM, we are excited for another incredible year of activism and advocacy.
Onward,
Justin Mendoza, MPH - Executive Director
Cassidy Parshall, MSc - Program Manager
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Founded in 2001, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines has the goal of ensuring equitable access to medicines for all people across the world. We strive to ensure that scientific discoveries and progress is not monopolized, but is made available to all. We are a student-led organization that pushes for progress within our universities and governments through research and advocacy.
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(Top) Attendees at the 2025 UAEM North America Conference hosted by McGill University in Montreal, Canada. (Left) Mona Reddy Kurra presents at the 2025 Conference to two eager listeners.
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2025 UAEM North America Conference
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Earlier this year, UAEM had its annual conference in Montreal, Canada. Hosted by the UAEM at McGill chapter, this conference, with a focus on The Future of Global Health: Equity Through Innovation, brought together UAEMers from all over North America to discuss some of the most pressing issues in the world of health policy. With panels on Civic Science, Indigenous Health, AI in Health, and more, this conference strengthened our community and sharpened our knowledge on the various changes in the field of equitable access to medicines.
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During the research poster session at the national conference, students, professionals, and administrators mingle to discuss current work in health policy.
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At the door, three members of the UAEM at McGill chapter hand out free T-shirts to attendees.
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Fall 2025 All Chapters Call
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On September 30th, UAEM North America chapters met to discuss 2025-2026 campaign priorities, the state of access to medicines, and opportunities to collaborate across chapters. Additionally, the UAEM NA Empowerment Team introduced a new online Chapter Handbook that provides campaign resources, skills trainings, and a course on how to build a UAEM chapter. During the call, UAEM NA also launched the 2025 End-of-Year Fundraising campaign: Protect Our Future Scientists.
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Recap of Access News and the Policy Landscape
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Trump slashed funding for universities that helped create these vital drugs
The Washington Post, October 6, 2025
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The Washington Post examined the history of six important drugs invented over the past few decades. In each case, crucial steps in the development of the medication came from taxpayer-funded research at universities now at risk of losing federal support.
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On May 20, 2025, the WHO Pandemic Agreement was adopted by the World Health Assembly, calling for an increased, collaborative effort between nations to prevent and respond to future pandemics. This bill represents the promise of increased international cooperation for health access when it comes to pandemic response. Some important implications include a call to facilitate “equitable access to relevant products and tools, technology transfer,” “equitable access to scalable clinical care,” and licensing with an emphasis on access among developing countries. The Agreement remains to be ratified by WHO Member States, pending the negotiation and completion of an annex on Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS). As the PABS Annex is being negotiated, UAEM continues to engage with Canada's Pandemic Agreement negotiating team to push for a PABS system that prioritizes equity.
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NIH Access Planning Policy
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After a delay in April from the Trump administration, the NIH Access Planning policy went into effect on October 1st, 2025. What does this mean? Pharmaceutical companies will be required to detail a "access plan" when receiving a license for NIH-owned technologies. The access plan must outline how they will ensure access to their product for US patients. While this policy is limited - only applying to NIH-owned inventions, rather than all NIH-funded innovation, and not requiring a plan for global access - we applaud this step toward increased governmental responsibility and continue to advocate for expansion of access planning at the NIH.
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Foreign Aid and Global Access to Medicines
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The Trump administration inflicted irreparable damage on the global health infrastructure through billions of dollars of foreign aid cuts and the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Studies estimate that these cuts could result in upwards of 14 million additional deaths by 2030. As public health is at risk globally, scientific progress has simultaneously unlocked a game changing tool: lenacapavir, a breakthrough medication for HIV prevention. Approved by the FDA in June 2025, this twice-yearly injectable is poised to transform the HIV response globally. Against this backdrop of deadly funding cuts and unprecedented scientific progress, UAEM co-hosted a side event at UNGA 2025 with Public Citizen, UNAIDS, and other health advocacy groups to chart a path forward for advancing global access to medicines.
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Taxpayers deserve the benefit of the bargain: Use the Bayh-Dole Act for access, not a political agenda.
By Cassidy Parshall, MSc, (Program Manager) and Justin Mendoza, MPH (Executive Director)
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In the Trump administration's most recent move to negotiate Harvard University’s federal funding, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick initiated an immediate review of the university’s intellectual property derived from taxpayer funded research.
With this move, the administration is positioning itself to assert the government’s rights to Harvard University’s intellectual property, citing the Bayh-Dole Act as their authority to do so.
The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 safeguards federally funded inventions by enabling the government to issue licenses to third parties if the patent owner does not comply with certain conditions that enable the widespread use of US-backed innovation. Additionally, Bayh-Dole outlines a fully paid-up license that allows for the government to utilize a patented product anywhere in the world, as described in petitions to the previous administration. These rights are important mechanisms to serve the interests of the public. Yet, past administrations have severely underutilized them to do so. In fact, at least 18 requests have been made of the U.S. government to utilize Bayh-Dole rights to benefit patients, scientists, and the global community and very rarely have those rights been utilized in any way.
Patients have long called for federal agencies to use this authority to expand access to lifesaving medicines that have been priced out of reach for many Americans–a failure of the US healthcare system that President Trump has vowed to fix. Today, one out of four adults have difficulty affording their prescription drugs. Through march-in rights and royalty-free licenses, the Bayh-Dole Act provides a potential pathway to fixing this problem, at least when a medicine’s discovery is funded with taxpayer dollars.
Drug development in the US is funded significantly by taxpayer dollars. From 2010 to 2019, 99.4% of drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration were funded in part by the US National Institutes of Health. While the US government puts nearly $50 billion annually into biomedical research and development, patients in the US continue to pay the highest prescription drug prices in the world.
Given President Trump’s pledge to protect American families by lowering the cost of prescription drugs, and efforts to ensure that the U.S. taxpayer receives a fair price on medicines, the administration should utilize these rights to lower prescription costs, increase generic competition, and spur new American manufacturing. Yet, during the previous Trump administration cancer patients petitioned Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price to utilize march-in rights for affordability, and the administration denied the petition.
At the time, Astellas Pharma, a Japanese corporation, was charging American citizens more than $130,000 per patient per year for Xtandi, an effective and important medicine for prostate cancer. Xtandi’s patents are subject to the Bayh-Dole Act. The administration rejected the petition based in part on the company providing an access program for some patients, and the increasing (at the time) sales of the lifesaving medicine.
In negotiation with Harvard, the Trump administration has demonstrated its willingness to wield the authorities granted by the Bayh-Dole Act, demanding that “Harvard provide a comprehensive list of all patents it has received stemming from federally funded research grants and provide information sufficient to prove its compliance with the Bayh-Dole Act, its associated regulation, and our contractual agreements.” Additionally, the administration references standards in the act, including whether or not Harvard may have taken the steps to ensure “practical application of the inventions.” Practical application includes making sure a product is available to the public on “reasonable terms.” Advocates have long argued that the “reasonable terms” standard should include the price of the product, especially when the product is a lifesaving medicine.
The question this raises is for what purpose will the Trump administration review Harvard’s patents? Rather than use Bayh-Dole as a tool in negotiation with a single university, the administration can and should utilize the law to help protect patients from high and rising costs for medicines developed with taxpayer funds.
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TTO Advocacy and Affordable Access Planning
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At the UAEM North America 2025 Conference, participants had the opportunity to attend the Advocating for Access to Medicines with your Technology Transfer Office discussion and learn more about advocacy on both the chapter and organizational levels. For all members, a great resource chapters can use to learn more about the Technology Transfer process and Affordable Access Plans (AAPs) is the Tech Transfer on Trial Responsible Licensing Report, written for UAEM by the Georgetown Law iPIP clinic this spring.
Included in the report is a discussion of how gaps in the technology transfer process often fail to translate publicly funded research into affordable medicines. The role of Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) and the history and implementation of AAPs is examined within a legal framework. Interviews with TTOs provide valuable insight into how AAPs are perceived and can be strengthened. Fortunately, many TTOs are in favor of AAPs and seek to act in the public interest. Chapters can use this to inform their advocacy and approach their university’s TTO as a partner rather than an adversary. Analysis of the legal and strategic implications of AAP submission timing shows the necessity of early intervention. The authors recommend the NIH’s Affordable Access Planning Strategy as a model for early commitment to access. Although there is uncertainty if a compound will ever be commercially viable in the preclinical stage, an AAP can serve as proactive alignment with public-interest values when universities hold the most leverage.
Important! The appendix of the report includes helpful templates to email and hold discussions with your university’s TTO, which we highly recommend utilizing.
Those with an interest in law school will find the final section discussing pre-law intervention of interest. It details the necessity for public interest-minded professionals in patent law, in which having a STEM background is especially important. Interested pre-law students should consider taking the Patent Bar Exam to work as a patent agent, which offers hands-on exposure to intellectual property work and would strengthen an application to law school.
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USG Passes Resolution Supporting Affordable Access Plan for Ohio State-Developed Medications
The Lantern, April 15, 2025
“The resolution, titled 57-R-XX and passed March 19, adopts policies created through the Affordable Access Plan — a licensing framework agreement developed by Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, a student-led organization that spans 100 universities across 20 countries.”
UAEM hosts 2nd annual conference to promote advancing health equity
Daily Bruin, April 13, 2025
“Students, researchers and policymakers expressed concerns about how the Trump administration will impact health equity and called for student advocacy at a Saturday conference. The second annual conference, hosted by Universities Allied for Essential Medicines at UCLA – a club seeking to improve medicine and affordable access – took place in the Neuroscience Research Building.”
IP licensing: universities pushed to ensure fair access to medicines
Global University Venturing, February 25, 2025
“More recently, University of California, Los Angeles worked with the Medicines Patent Pool and student group Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, to expand its equitable access licensing language.”
Call for University-driven drug pricing reform projected onto beinecke library, violating policy
Yale Daily News, November 20, 2024
“The projection, organized by Yale’s chapter of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines — UAEM — aimed to spotlight the University’s role in making drugs developed with public funds affordable and accessible to all.”
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Excited for what UAEM is preparing for this upcoming school year? Support us further by contributing to our mission of advocating for equitable access to medicines for all.
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The Dose is brought to you by our Communications Team: Asta Li, Soyeon Park, Anna Ramasamy, Jonathan Valenzuela Mejia, Auriane Journet, Michelle Rakhnayev, and Sydney Steiner. We are currently accepting applications to join our team!
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