“The key challenge for us at this Summit - as laid out implicitly
by the electorates, patients, and stakeholders we represent - is to grapple in practical
terms with how we best integrate these opportunities into our healthcare systems.
We cannot stand on the sidelines…
Healthcare needs to move from being our greatest
modern cost to becoming our greatest modern asset.”
– William Castell, The Wellcome Trust
(2005 Summit)
A multi-year dialogue as ambitious and important as the Pacific Health Summit could
not be attempted, much less successful, without the participation and support of forward-thinking
organizations and foundations, and selfless, generous individuals. The Summit is fortunate to have
all of these as sponsors. They are organized as follows:
Presenting Organizations
The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan institution that conducts advanced research on policy-relevant issues in Asia. It also serves as the global clearinghouse for
Asian research conducted by specialists and institutions worldwide. Through these activities NBR is uniquely positioned to promote informed and effective U.S. policy toward the region. NBR has served as the Secretariat to the Pacific Health Summit since its inception.
Top
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, established in 1975, is one of the world’s leading cancer-research institutes. The Hutchinson Center’s interdisciplinary teams of scientists conduct research in the laboratory, at patient bedside, and in communities throughout the world to advance the prevention, early detection and treatment of cancer, HIV/AIDS, and other diseases.
Center researchers pioneered bone-marrow transplantation for leukemia and other blood diseases. This research has cured thousands of patients worldwide and has boosted survival rates for certain forms of leukemia from zero to as high as 85 percent. The Hutchinson Center is home to three recipients of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, including the Center’s president and director, Lee Hartwell, PhD, who received the honor in 2001 for his discoveries regarding the mechanisms that control cell division.
Top
Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, we focus on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, we seek to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. Based in Seattle, the Foundation is led by CEO Jeff Raikes and Co-Chair William H. Gates Sr., under the direction of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.
Top
The Wellcome Trust is the largest biomedical research charity in the UK with the mission to foster and promote research with the aim of improving human and animal health. It funds innovative biomedical research, spending over £500 million each year to support the brightest scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust devotes a significant proportion of its funds to research conducted outside the UK and covers a broad range of activities that support global health research. It also supports public debate about biomedical research and its impact on health and wellbeing.
Top
Sponsors
The purpose of the Department of Health is to improve the health and wellbeing of people in England. Its work includes setting national standards for health and healthcare, shaping the direction of the National Health Service and social care services, and promoting healthier living.
The Department plays a key role in supporting high-quality research to inform decision making by policy makers through the Policy Research Programme and by clinicians, health service managers and patients through the National Institute for Health Research.
Top
The Medical Research Council (MRC) is a publicly-funded organization dedicated to improving human health. MRC supports research across the entire spectrum of medical sciences, in universities and hospitals, in their own units and institutes in the UK, and in their units in Africa.
Top
GlaxoSmithKline—one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies—is committed to improving the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer. GSK Biologicals (GSK Bio), one of the world’s leading vaccine manufacturers, is headquartered in Rixensart, Belgium, where the majority of GlaxoSmithKline’s activities in the field of vaccine research, development, and production are conducted. GSK Bio employs more than 1,500 scientists, who are devoted to discovering new vaccines and developing more cost-effective and convenient combination products to prevent infections that cause serious medical problems worldwide. In 2005, GSK Bio distributed more than 1.2 billion doses of vaccines to 165 countries in both the developed and the developing world, an average of more than 3 million doses per day.
Top
Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development (J&JPRD) is a fully-integrated company employing some of the world’s most advanced R&D technologies and world-renowned experts in drug discovery, evaluation, and global development. The company applies creative thinking and cutting-edge technologies to develop innovative, high-value, cost effective products that significantly improve the health and lifestyles of people worldwide. J&JPRD’s researchers and physicians discover, evaluate, and develop compounds that target patients’ unmet medical needs across a broad range of therapeutic areas, including infectious diseases. With expertise in small molecules, genomics, bioinformatics, high throughput screening, and structural biology, J&JPRD offers an elegant balance of novel in-house and in-license compounds that target new pathways. The company employs a seamless, end-to-end process through all R&D phases—from discovery and evaluation to development and launch. In combination, these two approaches have resulted in a robust portfolio of diverse pharmaceutical products that address public healthcare needs, including access and affordability, in meaningful ways.
Top
GE Healthcare demonstrated its leadership by becoming the first organization to sponsor the Pacific Health Summit and has continued to support the Summit each year. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) employing more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. GE Healthcare is an integral part of GE’s new $6 billion "healthymagination" vision to help customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, the program will improve the health and competitiveness of GE’s employees and encourages GE Healthcare to partner with healthcare leaders and Governments striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems. For more information on healthymagination, please click
here.
Top
Sanofi-aventis is a diversified global healthcare company, focused on patient needs. Core strengths are a worldwide presence, market leadership in vaccines, and major biological products. In addition to prescription pharmaceuticals and vaccines, company business activities include consumer healthcare products, generics, and animal health products. With almost 100,000 employees in more than 100 countries, sanofi-aventis posted sales of more than 27.5 billion Euros in 2008, including 22.9 billion Euros in pharmaceutical business and 2.8 billion Euros in the human vaccines business, where sanofi pasteur is a world leader. As a healthcare leader, sanofi-aventis is concerned about global public health issues: to meet the needs of countries in the Southern hemisphere, we work through “Access to medicines” programs to combat malaria, tuberculosis, sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis, and epilepsy.
Top
Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of sanofi-aventis Group, provided more than 1.6 billion doses of vaccines in 2008, making it possible to immunize more than 500 million people across the globe. A world leader in the vaccine industry, sanofi pasteur offers the broadest range of vaccines protecting against 20 infectious diseases. The company's heritage, to create vaccines that protect life, dates back more than a century. Sanofi Pasteur is the largest company entirely dedicated to vaccines. Every day, the company invests more than 1 million Euros in research and development.
Top
Merck & Co., Inc. is a global health research company dedicated to improving humanity through treatment identification, prevention and cures of unmapped diseases. As one of the largest pharmaceutical facilities in the world, Merck discovers and produces medicines and vaccines in over 20 remedial categories. Merck is committed to putting patients first and dedicates resources towards reaching remote locations to provide the most advanced health essentials for those in need.
Top
Swedish Medical Center is the largest, most comprehensive, nonprofit health-care provider in Seattle. Swedish is comprised of three hospital campuses (First Hill, Providence, and Ballard), a new community-based emergency room and specialty center in Issaquah, Swedish Home Care Services and Swedish Physicians—a network of 12 primary-care clinics. In addition to general medical and surgical care, Swedish is known as a regional referral center, providing specialized treatment in areas such as cardiac care, oncology, orthopedics, high-risk obstetrics, neurological care, sleep medicine, pediatrics, organ transplantation, and clinical research. Swedish has also taken a leadership role in providing community health delivery innovations, including its new Medical Home on its Ballard campus.
Top
Chevron Corporation is one of the world's leading integrated energy companies, with subsidiaries that conduct business worldwide. Chevron is the largest resource holder and producer among international oil companies in Asia-Pacific. The company's success is driven by the ingenuity and commitment of approximately 62,000 employees who operate across the energy spectrum. Chevron explores for, produces, and transports crude oil and natural gas; refines, markets, and distributes transportation fuels and other energy products; manufactures and sells petrochemical products; generates power and produces geothermal energy; provides energy efficiency solutions; and develops the energy resources of the future, including biofuels and other renewables. Chevron is based in San Ramon, California.
Top
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services, and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft’s global vision enables its diverse workforce to generate innovative ideas and develop new technology. Through these ideas, Microsoft has developed the deep foundation necessary to support the communities that we work and live in each day.
Top
The Coca-Cola Company is the largest nonalcoholic beverage company in the world. Along with
Coca-Cola, the Company markets four of the world’s top-five soft drinks, including diet Coke, Fanta, and Sprite, and nearly 400 brands and more than 2,100 products worldwide—including low- and no-calorie soft drinks, juices and juice drinks, waters, sports and energy drinks, teas, coffees, soybased drinks, and fortified beverages with nutritional benefits. In 2004, the Company established the Beverage Institute for Health & Wellness to advance understanding of role that beverages, and beverage ingredients, can play in nutrition, health, and wellness.
Top
Supporting Organizations
The Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS), an initiative of Seattle Children’s, works to eliminate prematurity and stillbirths globally. The one million annual deaths from prematurity contribute to more under-five deaths than AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis. In addition, a staggering three million stillbirths occur each year, yet this often-taboo topic is rarely addressed. In collaboration with diverse global partners in science, public health and policy, GAPPS is advancing research to understand causes; accelerating delivery of low-cost, effective interventions; and raising awareness about these neglected issues. GAPPS is also building a repository of data and specimens from pregnant women, such as blood and tissues, which will serve as a significant global resource in advancing medical and public health research.
Top
The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society.
More information is at www.macfound.org.
Top
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is a component of the National Institutes of Health, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NCI coordinates the National Cancer Program, which conducts and supports research, training, health information dissemination, and other programs with respect to the cause, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cancer, rehabilitation from cancer, and the continuing care of cancer patients and the families of cancer patients.
Top
RESULTS Educational Fund, and its affiliate offices, is committed to educating the public, media, and leaders about issues related to domestic and global poverty and hunger. REF holds public forums, trains
citizens in democracy, holds media conference calls to share the latest information, and produces quality oversight research to determine the effectiveness of programs for the poor.
Top
The Rockefeller Foundation works around the world to ensure that more individuals, institutions, and communities can tap into growth and opportunity while strengthening resilience to risks and challenges, affirming its founding mission to “promote the well-being” of humanity. The Foundation today supports initiatives to mobilize an agricultural revolution in sub-Saharan Africa, bolster economic security for American workers, inform more equitable, sustainable transportation policies in the United States, assure access to affordable, high-quality health systems in developing countries, and help vulnerable communities cope with the impacts of imminent climate change.
Top
Founding Organization
The Russell Family Foundation was created as a way for the extended Russell family to make a quiet, positive impact in the community. Founded with part of the proceeds from the sale of the Frank
Russell Company to Northwestern Mutual Life in 1999, The Russell Family Foundation seeks to demonstrate integrity, mutual trust, constructive communication, life-long learning, and courage in all of its activities.
Top
These sponsors will play a vital role in creating this
historic opportunity – to bridge borders, traverse new policies, stem disease
and save lives – full partners on an expedition to scale the heights of disease
detection and prevention.