From drug development to drug affordability, the medicines system affects who lives and who dies.
While the healthcare system gets a lot of public scrutiny and accountability, the medicines system does not. Priti Krishtel, health justice lawyer and co-founder of I-MAK, explains how in the midst of a global pandemic that is disproportionately costing Black and Brown lives, it is critical that we deepen our collective understanding about the medicines system and the structural racism that is embedded within it.
About the Speaker
Priti Krishtel is a health justice lawyer and co-founder of , a non-profit building a more just and equitable medicines system. She has spent nearly two decades exposing structural inequities affecting access to medicines and vaccines across the Global South and in the United States. I-MAK's on the patent system has been cited repeatedly in Congressional testimony on prescription drug costs, most recently in hearings by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Priti has been featured in , Entrepreneur, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and . A current Presidential Leadership Scholar and an Ashoka Fellow, Priti’s about the high cost of prescription drugs in America was viewed more than two million times in 2020.
About the Chair
Ken Shadlen is Professor of Development Studies in the Department of International Development of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Ken works on the comparative and international political economy of development, with a focus on understanding variation in national policy responses to changing global rules.
In recent years Ken’s research has focused largely on the global and cross-national politics of intellectual property (IP). He is interested in the implications that the new global IP regime presents for late development, and the various ways that international norms for IP affect national practices.
Photo: on Unsplash