Ethics expert to speak on transparency and trust in pharma

Dr. Jennifer E. Miller, an assistant professor of medical ethics and population health at New York University and president of Bioethics International, will speak at Augusta University Wednesday, Dec. 6.

Her public talk, Ethics, Transparency and Trust in Pharma and the Role of the Good Pharma Scorecard, is at 5 p.m. in Room 1210 of the J. Harold Harrison M.D. Education Commons. She will also speak to Medical College of Georgia resident physicians at 11:30 a.m. in the Natalie and Lansing B. Lee Sr. Auditoria Center.

Bioethics International works to advance patient and global public health by improving the ethics, transparency, patient-centricity and governance of health care innovation and delivery. Their work is focused on the ethics and governance of how medicines, vaccines, biologics and devices are researched, developed, marketed and made accessible to patients domestically and globally.

Miller created the company’s Good Pharma Scorecard, an index that ranks large pharmaceutical companies and every new FDA-approved drug on key ethics, human rights and public health criteria. The focus is on five areas: design of clinical trials, how trials are conducted, trial transparency and data sharing, medical marketing concerns and accessibility of medicine and vaccines. In their first scorecard, in 2012, they found that 35 percent of trial results per drug are publicly unavailable; half of all drugs have an unreported phase II or III trial; and positive results are two times as likely to be published as negative results.

Miller also serves on the World Economic Forum, NYU’s Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee and Stem Cell Oversight Board and as a monitor on the Johnson and Johnson-NYU Compassionate Use Advisory Committee. She has served on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Task Force for Pediatric and Emergency and Mass Critical Care, the American Medical Association’s Advanced Disaster Life Support Education Consortium (which had its beginnings at MCG), as a consultant to the United Nations Economic and Social Council and on the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute/National Institutes of Health Collaboratory.

Miller earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Fordham University, and master’s and doctoral degrees in bioethics from the Pontifical System, and completed predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships in ethics and institutional corruption at Harvard University, and a postdoctorate degree in regulatory governance at Duke University.

Her presentation is sponsored by the AU Institute of Public and Preventive Health’s Center for Bioethics and Health Policy and the Medical College of Georgia’s Leadership Through Ethics Program.