THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. and
BERKELEY, Calif., Aug. 18, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Amgen
(NASDAQ:AMGN) and the Center for Social Sector Leadership at the
University of California (UC),
Berkeley's Haas School of Business
today announced a multi-year partnership to offer a graduate-level
course on measuring outcomes of cancer patient advocacy education
and support programs. The MBA course, Social Impact Metrics, is
designed to advance the ability of nonprofit organizations to
measure the effectiveness of their programs, which is critical in
an increasingly challenging donor environment. The overall goal of
the initiative is to create a set of measurement best practices
that can be adopted across the cancer nonprofit community and
beyond.
Amgen has awarded four cancer patient advocacy groups - Bladder
Cancer Advocacy Network, Cancer Support Community, Chris4Life Colon
Cancer Foundation and Critical Mass - with $35,000 sponsorships to measure the impact of an
educational or support initiative. The Berkeley MBA students and
faculty will work with the winners to evaluate a specific metrics
challenge, recommend a solution, and provide an implementation plan
during the semester-long course from August to December 2015.
"Establishing meaningful metrics is critical for nonprofits to
improve their impact on the lives of those they serve and
demonstrate results to funders," said Colin
Boyle, deputy director of University of
California, San Francisco Global Health Services and the
Haas faculty member who will be teaching this course.
The partnership was formed based on the results of a survey of
cancer nonprofit organizations conducted by Amgen in 2013. The
study found that creating robust metrics can be a challenge in the
social impact field, even as foundations, nonprofits, social
enterprises and corporations seek to develop stronger and more
significant measures of effectiveness.
"This partnership, like other experiential learning
opportunities at UC Berkeley, gives our students a chance to
develop and implement solutions in the real world," said
Nora Silver, faculty director for
the Center for Social Sector Leadership (formerly known as the
Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership). "These types of
experiences will prove invaluable to our students as they learn how
to forge evidence-based solutions that address current challenges
for nonprofits."
"Amgen and other healthcare companies provide substantial
support to patient advocacy organizations with the hope that,
together, we are making a difference in meeting the needs of
patients and families," said Raymond C.
Jordan, senior vice president of Corporate Affairs at Amgen.
"By measuring the impact of these programs, we can learn how to be
more effective in achieving our shared goal of improving the lives
of people with cancer. Amgen is excited to support this unique
initiative that establishes multi-disciplinary collaboration
between the pharmaceutical, academic and patient advocacy
communities."
About the Winning Patient Advocacy Projects
Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network's (BCAN) Patient Webinar Series
launched in 2012, to address a variety of education topics and
features bladder cancer experts from highly-regarded medical
institutions. BCAN is looking to measure the impact this series has
on patients, caregivers and family members.
Cancer Support Community (CSC) seeks to better measure the
impact of the CSC Cancer Support Helpline®, which
reaches thousands of patients, family members and health care
professionals each year. Launched in April of 2012, licensed mental
health professionals provide telephone support interventions that
help patients and caregivers identify and address needs and link
them to vital information and community resources in order to help
them to live better lives, reduce distress and better engage with
their health care team.
Chris4Life Colon Cancer Foundation's clinical trial database,
Blue Data, is designed to provide a simple and user-friendly
interface that allows patients to accelerate the process of
identifying appropriate clinical trials for participation and
simplifying the screening process. Chris4Life seeks to measure how
patients are engaging with the database in order to improve upon
its function and use in order to increase the number of patients
who participate in clinical trials.
Critical Mass is looking to measure the impact of its "Mission
Control" localized search engine of programs and services
specifically curated for adolescents and young adults with cancer.
By analyzing the data captured from its current users, Critical
Mass seeks to improve the efficient identification of relevant
resources to ensure that every adolescent and young adult diagnosed
with cancer finds the resources they need, when they need
them.
About the Course and Award Criteria
The course will consist of a research project conducted by
Berkeley MBA students to assess best practices in nonprofit
programming and metrics. The research project is expected to be
submitted for publication to a social impact journal. The students'
efforts will not only benefit the sponsorship awardees, but also
the patient advocacy community at large that can adopt and learn
from the case study solutions upon publication.
The call-for-sponsorships was announced in March 2015, and applications were due by
May 29, 2015. To qualify for the
award, the nonprofits must have demonstrated a commitment to
measuring the impact of their educational or patient support
initiatives and have had a specific program or initiative they
wished to measure more effectively, along with meeting other
criteria for consideration. The selection committee considered a
range of criteria, including the variety and mix of programs,
relevance to the broader cancer and nonprofit communities and
feasibility of executing the metrics solution within the allotted
timeframe.
About Amgen
Amgen is committed to unlocking the potential of biology for
patients suffering from serious illnesses by discovering,
developing, manufacturing and delivering innovative human
therapeutics. This approach begins by using tools like advanced
human genetics to unravel the complexities of disease and
understand the fundamentals of human biology.
Amgen focuses on areas of high unmet medical need and leverages
its biologics manufacturing expertise to strive for solutions that
improve health outcomes and dramatically improve people's lives. A
biotechnology pioneer since 1980, Amgen has grown to be one of the
world's leading independent biotechnology companies, has reached
millions of patients around the world and is developing a pipeline
of medicines with breakaway potential.
For more information, visit www.amgen.com and follow us on
www.twitter.com/amgen.
About UC Berkeley's Haas School Business and the Center for
Social Sector Leadership
The Center for Social Sector Leadership (formerly known as the
Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership) at UC Berkeley's Haas
School of Business inspires the next generation of leaders to
create and seize opportunities to achieve social impact across
sectors. The Center is #3 in the country in business school
nonprofit programs as reported by US News & World Report
2015.
The second-oldest business school in the United States, the Haas School of Business
at the University of California
Berkeley, is one of the world's leading producers of new
ideas and knowledge in all areas of business. This includes the
distinction of having two of its faculty members receive the Nobel
Prize in Economics over the past 20 years.
The school offers outstanding management education to about
2,200 undergraduate and graduate students each year who come from
around the world to study in one of its six degree-granting
programs. The school has 40,000 alumni.
The school's mission is "to develop leaders who redefine how we
do business." The school's distinctive culture is defined by four
defining principles:
- Question the status quo
- Confidence without attitude
- Students always
- Beyond yourself
CONTACT: Amgen
Kristen Davis, 805-447-3008
(media)
Lori Melançon, 650-266-2394(media)
University of California, Berkeley's
Haas School of Business
Kim Girard, 415-298-6336 (media)
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SOURCE Amgen