AstraZeneca applauds the United States Senate for voting today to reauthorize the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, a law that authorizes the US Food and Drug Administration to collect fees from biopharmaceutical companies to help pay for the regulatory review process of medicines and biological products.
As we’ve recently written about here, PDUFA provides much needed resources to the FDA. We hope that the resulting legislation will lead to a more efficient, predictable, transparent and well coordinated drug review process within the FDA while strengthening the scientific base at the agency, supporting patient safety and promoting innovation.
May is Asthma Awareness Month and peak season for asthma sufferers. It’s an important time to educate your family, friends and co-workers about this chronic disease.
How prevalent is it? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 24.6 million Americans are living with asthma.
AstraZeneca has a longstanding commitment to researching and developing innovative treatment options for asthma patients. Part of this ongoing commitment in asthma research, new data have been presented at the 2012 Annual International Conference of the American Thoracic Society (ATS).
To access helpful asthma resources, including information on asthma triggers and steps that may help prevent asthma attacks, visit the EPA’s website at www.epa.gov/asthma/about.html. Or to take a free asthma assessment, click here.
Elizabeth Renz,Director, Brand Corporate Affairs at AstraZeneca
Today’s post explores “positive values” as a category of internal assets or those personal values, competencies and experiences that come from within.
What are positive values?
Values are those worthwhile principles, standards, and qualities in children and young people that help make them strong. According to Search Institute, values become an inner compass that young people can use to guide them in making choices in a confusing world.
The six positive values assets
The developmental assets framework includes six positive values assets that are one way of naming a set of positive principles, standard, and qualities:
Caring – Young person places high value on helping other people.
Equality and Social Justice – Young person places high values on promoting equality and reducing hunger and poverty.
Integrity – Young person acts on convictions and stands up for her or his beliefs.
Honesty – Young person “tells the truth even when it is not easy.”
Responsibility – Young person accepts and takes personal responsibility.
Restraint – Young person believes it is important not to be sexually active or to use alcohol or other drugs.
Assets in action: Tamy’s story
AstraZeneca’s Tamy Raina says “you can’t keep me away” from the Ronald McDonald House. Here Tamy shares how in caring for others, she gains great personal fulfillment and strength from the families she spends time with who stay there.
Ideas for building positive values
The following tips are courtesy of Search Institute:
Model the positive values assets.
Talk to people – young and old – in respectful ways.
Discuss equality and social justice issues on a regular basis.
Choose a cause that you and a young person both care about. Select a project you can do together to further your cause.
Notice and comment when a young person’s behaviors reflect these positive values.
Take responsibility for your own actions. Apologize to young people when your actions don’t quite measure up to these values.
Coach and role-play communication skills that support using restraint and making healthy choices.
For more information about the Young Health Program: IM40, visit www.im40.org. To connect with other asset builders on Twitter, use #YHP40 or visit us on Facebook.
Members of the Cadence Cycling Foundation before the Wilmington Grand Prix Cadence Youth Races.
Twenty-five Wilmington-area youth are pairing up with members of the AstraZeneca Cycling Club to participate in the Wilmington Grand Prix Cadence Youth Races today.
The young cyclists are part of the Cadence Cycling Foundation, which was expanded in 2011 and 2012 with funding from AstraZeneca to include youth from Mt. Pleasant High School and the H. Fletcher Brown Boys and Girls Glub in Wilmington.
As mentioned in a recent post about the AstraZeneca Young Health Program, AstraZeneca employees also support the Cadence Cycling Foundation by serving as mentors to help young people improve their physical well-being and build life skills through the sport of cycling.
AstraZeneca is proud to also support the Wilmington Grand Prix Cadence Youth Races, which provides a unique opportunity for adolescents to participate in a competitive cycling event in the downtown. The Youth Races will draw more than 100 cyclists from the tri-state area (ages 10-16) who will compete in a mildly-competitive series of races on the Grand Prix course.
The afternoon’s festivities began at 2:30 p.m. with a police-escorted ride from AstraZeneca’s headquarters in Fairfax to Wilmington’s Brandywine Park. After completing the time trials at 4 p.m., the competitors will attend an awards presentation held at the Grand Opera House.
FOR ABOUT 20 years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has charged pharmaceutical companies “user fees” for reviewing drug-approval applications. The revenue allows the FDA to hire more evaluators, which allows useful drugs to reach patients faster. Now the Prescription Drug User Fee Act needs reauthorization, as it does every five years. Legislators should not dillydally.
The bill accounts for more than half of the FDA’s drug-approval budget. Critics fret that this dependence could make the FDA beholden to those it regulates. But there’s been no evidence of that, and the risk clearly does not outweigh the benefits of faster approval times — to patients and to companies motivated by profit to develop life-saving treatments.
Congressional reauthorization has been an occasion to renew the perennial debate over the balance between safety and speed, between ensuring that new drugs will have no unintended consequences and getting helpful treatments to sick people as quickly as possible. This time around, the balance appears to be tilting slightly toward faster approval. That’s good.
The law, however, is set to expire and must be reauthorized by September.
Because AstraZeneca stands for programs that work and a strong, well-funded and well-managed FDA, we support a timely reauthorization of PDUFA that provides much needed resources to the agency.
We hope that the resulting legislation will lead to a more efficient, predictable, transparent and well coordinated drug review process within the FDA while strengthening the scientific base at the agency, supporting patient safety and promoting innovation.
Today’s post explores “commitment to learning” as a category of internal assets or those personal values, competencies and experiences that come from within.
What is commitment to learning?
A commitment to learning is a commitment to growing says Search Institute. When we learn something new, we grow, change and expand our horizons. This is true whether one is age 5, 15, or 55. Young people look to their teachers, parents, and neighbors to learn new information, ideas and perspectives.
The five commitment to learning assets
The developmental assets framework includes five commitment to learning assets that show how much young people are motivated to learn:
1. Achievement Motivation – Young person is motivated to do well in school.
2. School Engagement – Young person is actively engaged in learning.
3. Homework – Young person reports doing at least one hour of homework every school day.
4. Bonding to School – Young person cares about her or his school.
5. Reading for Pleasure – Young person reads for pleasure three or more hours per week.
Assets in action: Davida’s story
Her own love of learning and wanting to give back is why AstraZeneca’s Davida Baker volunteers with The Forum to Advance Minorities in Engineering (FAME) program. Through this program, Davida and other local professionals encourage young people to pursue careers in engineering and science.
Ideas for building a commitment to learning
The following tips are courtesy of Search Institute:
Model curiosity and discovery. A commitment to learning is contagious.
Read with young people and encourage them to read on their own.
Make learning relevant. Young people benefit from seeing how learning applies to working.
Provide a calm, pleasant atmosphere for learning and studying.
Highlight learning beyond the classroom. Learning happens in many different places – in homes, nature, community centers, congregations, workplaces, and parks.
Highlight for youth what others have accomplished through education.
For more information about the Young Health Program: IM40, visit www.im40.org. To connect with other asset builders on Twitter, use #YHP40 or visit us on Facebook.
A 1.7MW solar field was installed on AZ’s Wilmington campus in June 2011.
AstraZeneca’s US sites continue to look for and identify new ways of working that will eliminate or reduce waste sent to landfill or incinerated such as the composting of our food waste, reuse/recycle of containers, reduction of packaging materials, etc. These efforts resulted in a 35 percent increase in our reuse/recycling rates for 2011 as compared to 2010.
Our US sites focus on energy reduction opportunities by identifying more efficient ways of working coupled with the use of improved technologies. At our Wilmington, Del., site, we implemented a 1.7MW solar panel field that equates to roughly 10 percent of the site’s office buildings’ electrical use. Overall, we reduced our energy use by 14 percent from the year before.
Employees at most AstraZeneca US sites have the opportunity to reduce their own carbon footprint by carpooling, taking advantage of flexible working arrangements such as telecommuting, using new/improved technology such as videoconferencing and netmeeting, recycling stations, and composting of food wastes.
For more information, visit the Responsibility page of www.astrazeneca.com.
