Amgen allies with US university to support cancer patient advocacy schemes

Amgen has announced a new multi-year cancer support partnership with the Center for Social Sector Leadership at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

Through the partnership, a graduate-level course will be offered on measuring outcomes of cancer patient advocacy education and support programmes. This will help not-for-profit organisations to measure the effectiveness of their initiatives.

The overall goal of the initiative is to create a set of measurement best practices that can be adopted across the cancer non-profit community and beyond, with overall strategy to be informed by a survey of cancer support organisations conducted by Amgen in 2013.

As part of this, Amgen has awarded four cancer patient advocacy groups – Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network, Cancer Support Community, Chris4Life Colon Cancer Foundation and Critical Mass – with sponsorships to measure the impact of educational or support initiatives.

Raymond Jordan, senior vice-president of corporate affairs at Amgen, said: "Amgen is excited to support this unique initiative that establishes multidisciplinary collaboration between the pharmaceutical, academic and patient advocacy communities."