Jillian Clare Köhler
Biographic Data
| ID | 6738062 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jillian Clare Köhler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jillian Clare |
| FAMILY NAME | Köhler |
| SIGNATURE | KÖHLER J C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1290-9484 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 34 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Patient organizations involvement in healthcare
BACKGROUND: Patient organizations have become increasingly influential in the healthcare sector, offering unique insights into unmet health needs, disease impact, and patients' quality of life. These groups have evolved from advocates for access to treatment, as seen during the HIV/AIDS crisis, to active participants in the research and policy-making processes. Despite growing recognition of their critical role, a comprehensive understanding of t…
Corruption risks in Covid-19 vaccine deployment
BACKGROUND: During the COVID-19 pandemic corruption risks were amplified in health systems globally, increasing health inequities within and between countries. During the pandemic, the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines, particularly concerning their procurement and distribution, had corruption risks given the large amounts of public and private funding allocated to them, the need for speed, the involvement of a high number of stakeholders, and ofte…
Accountability in global health systems
Beginning in 1996, Purdue Pharmaceuticals (Purdue) knowingly mislabeled and mass marketed OxyContin (oxycodone), an opioid painkiller, catalyzing the opioid crisis which has been responsible for more than 600 000 deaths in and beyond North America. This case is an extreme example of how transnational pharmaceutical companies prioritize shareholder profits over public wellbeing. As such, the field of global health faces the critical challenge of b…
Legislating for Good Governance in the Pharmaceutical Sector through UN Convention Against Corruption (Uncac) Compliance
Pharmaceutical sector corruption undermines patient access to medicines by diverting public funds for private gain and exacerbating health inequities . This paper presents an analysis of UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) compliance in seven countries and examines how full UNCAC adoption may reduce corruption risks within four key pharmaceutical decision-making points: product approval, formulary selection, procurement, and dispensing. Coun…
Interconnected influence
This study advances understandings of the complex interplay between transnational pharmaceutical companies, global health systems, regulatory bodies, and public health. In doing so, we underscore the need for stronger regulation and increased transparency surrounding the interactions between pharma, patient groups, governments, and international organizations to better address and prevent future harms
Shared health governance, mutual collective accountability, and transparency in Covax
Background: To facilitate global COVID-19 vaccine equity, the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations, and the United Nations Children's Fund supported the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) partnership. COVAX's goals may have best been pursued through shared health governance - a theory of global health governance based on six premises, in which global…
Medicine donations
Corruption risks in health procurement during the Covid-19 pandemic and anti-corruption, transparency and accountability (Acta) mechanisms to reduce these risks
A global social contract to ensure access to essential medicines and health technologies
The COVID-19 pandemic illuminates the need to move away from the current social contract, which focuses on the nation-state’s responsibility for protecting the health of its own population, including by providing essential medicines and health technologies. We argue for embracing a global social contract, which is a governance concept that lays the foundation for how states should act as members of the international community, as regulators of th…
Disclosure, transparency, and accountability
BACKGROUND: Weak governance over public sector pharmaceutical policy and practice limits access to essential medicines, inflates pharmaceutical prices, and wastes scarce health system resources. Pharmaceutical systems are technically complex and involve extensive interactions between the private and public sectors. For members of public sector pharmaceutical committees, relationships with the private sector can result in conflicts of interest, wh…
The Global Fund
BACKGROUND: The creation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, also known as the Global Fund, was prompted by the lack of a timely and effective global response, and the need for financing to fight against three devastating diseases: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. During the formation of the Global Fund, necessary anti-corruption, transparency, and accountability (ACTA) structures were not put in place to prevent fraud…
Intellectual property and access to medicines
BACKGROUND: Transparency and accountability are essential components at all stages of the trade negotiation process. This study evaluates the extent to which these principles were upheld in the United States' public consultation process during the negotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), with respect to public comments about the pharmaceutical sector and access to medicines. RESULTS: The public consultation process occurr…
Detection of self-reported experiences with corruption on twitter using unsupervised machine learning
Corruption is a significant challenge to the future of human development, economic progress, and population health in the post millennium. Corruption, in its different forms of bribery, fraud, waste, collusion, and illicit financial flows, not only leads to waste but can also erode trust in government and public systems. Corruption is also complex and globalized with different forms of corruption occurring across different countries and multiple …
Social capital and public health
Exploring anti-corruption, transparency, and accountability in the World Health Organization, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank Group, and the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tubercu…
Corruption is recognized by the global community as a threat to development generally and to achieving health goals, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal # 3: ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all. As such, international organizations such as the World Health Organizations and the United Nations Development Program are creating an evidence base on how best to address corruption in health systems. At present, t…
The risk of corruption in public pharmaceutical procurement
Background: The goal of the public procurement of pharmaceuticals is to purchase sufficient quantities of high-quality pharmaceuticals at cost-effective prices for a given population. This goal can be undercut if corruption infiltrates the procurement process. Good procurement practices can help mitigate the risks of corruption and support equitable access to affordable and high-quality medicines.Objectives: This paper aims to 1) examine manifest…
Global health and human rights in the time of Covid-19
Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted a range of human rights, with the pandemic being used to justify police violence, authoritarian power grabs, and corruption. Health systems in high- and low-income countries have struggled to provide adequate COVID-19 testing, tracing, and treatment, with non-COVID-19 healthcare-restricted, vulnerable populations at high risk of infection and negative health and social impacts, and lockdowns…
Analyzing the impact of trade and investment agreements on pharmaceutical policy
BACKGROUND: Trade and investment agreements negotiated after the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) have included increasingly elevated protection of intellectual property rights along with an expanding array of rules impacting many aspects of pharmaceutical policy. Despite the large body of literature on intellectual property and access to affordable medicines, the ways in which …
Corporate social responsibility to improve access to medicines
BACKGROUND: Access to medicines and the development of a strong national pharmaceutical industry are two longstanding pillars of health policy in Brazil. This is reflected in a clear emphasis by Brazil's Federal Government on improving access to medicine in national health plans and industrial policies aimed at promoting domestic pharmaceutical development. This research proposes that such policies may act as incentives for companies to pursue a …
Matching safety to access
BACKGROUND: The Kenyan government has sought to address inadequacies in its National Pharmaceutical Policy and the Pharmacy and Poisons Board's (PPB) medicines governance by engaging with global actors (e.g. the World Health Organization). Policy actors have influenced the way pharmacovigilance is defined, how challenges are understood and which norms are requisite to address drug safety issues. In this paper, we investigate the relationship betw…
Civil society participation in the health system
BACKGROUND: Brazil created Health Councils to bring together civil society groups, heath professionals, and government officials in the discussion of health policies and health system resource allocation. However, several studies have concluded that Health Councils are not very influential on healthcare policy. This study probes this issue further by providing a descriptive account of some of the challenges civil society face within Brazil's Heal…
Does Pharmaceutical Pricing Transparency Matter? Examining Brazil’s Public Procurement System
BACKGROUND: We review procurement and pricing transparency practices for pharmaceutical products. We specifically focus on Brazil and examine its approach to increasing pricing transparency, with the aim of determining the level of effectiveness in lower prices using a tool (Banco de Preços em Saúde, BPS) that only reveals purchase prices as compared to other tools (in other countries) that establish a greater degree of price transparency. METHOD…
Participatory health councils and good governance
Although PHCs are intended to be inclusive and participatory, in practice they seem to have little impact on the health policymaking process in Brazil. PHCs will only be able to fulfil their mandate when we see good governance largely present. This will require a rethinking of their governance structures, processes, membership, and oversight. If change is resisted, the PHCs will remain largely limited to a good idea in theory that is disappointin…
A call for a moratorium on the .health generic top-level domain
In just a few weeks, the Internet could be expanded to include a new .health generic top-level domain name run by a for-profit company with virtually no public health credentials - unless the international community intervenes immediately. This matters to the future of global public health as the "Health Internet" has begun to emerge as the predominant source of health information for consumers and patients. Despite this increasing use and relian…
“To patent or not to patent? the case of Novartis’ cancer drug Glivec in India”
BACKGROUND: Glivec (imatinib mesylate), produced by the pharmaceutical company Novartis, is prescribed in the case of chronic myeloid leukemia, one of the most common blood cancers in eastern countries. After more than a decade of legal battles surrounding its patentability, the Supreme Court of India gave its final decision on April 1st of 2013, rejecting the appeal of the Swiss giant drug manufacturer. In 2006, the Indian Patent Office first re…
Global health and human rights in the time of Covid-19
Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted a range of human rights, with the pandemic being used to justify police violence, authoritarian power grabs, and corruption. Health systems in high- and low-income countries have struggled to provide adequate COVID-19 testing, tracing, and treatment, with non-COVID-19 healthcare-restricted, vulnerable populations at high risk of infection and negative health and social impacts, and lockdowns…
Transparency in Nigeria's public pharmaceutical sector
BACKGROUND: Pharmaceuticals are an integral component of health care systems worldwide, thus, regulatory weaknesses in governance of the pharmaceutical system negatively impact health outcomes especially in developing countries 1. Nigeria is one of a number of countries whose pharmaceutical system has been impacted by corruption and has struggled to curtail the production and trafficking of substandard drugs. In 2001, the National Agency for Food…
The role of supportive supervision on immunization program outcome - a randomized field trial from Georgia
BACKGROUND: One of the most common barriers to improving immunization coverage rates is human resources and its management. In the Republic of Georgia, a country where widespread health care reforms have taken place over the last decade, an intervention was recently implemented to strengthen performance of immunization programs. A range of measures were taken to ensure that immunization managers carry out their activities effectively through dire…
Framing access to medicines in developing countries
BACKGROUND: In September 2003, the Canadian government committed to developing legislation that would facilitate greater access to affordable medicines for developing countries. Over the course of eight months, the legislation, now known as Canada's Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR), went through a controversial policy development process and the newspaper media was one of the major venues in which the policy debates took place. The purpose of th…
Access to medicines and domestic compulsory licensing
Within the array of measures for improving medicines access for the world's neediest populations, governments of many countries have turned to compulsory licensing, a statutory mechanism to enable third parties to manufacture a product or process still under patent. In this paper, we focus on a historic case example from Canada and the present example of Thailand's use of domestic compulsory licenses as a policy tool for ensuring public access to…
The make or buy debate
BACKGROUND: In order to ensure their population's regular access to essential medicines, many least developed countries and developing countries are faced with the policy question of whether to import or manufacture drugs locally, in particular for life-saving antiretroviral medicines for HIV/AIDS patients. In order for domestic manufacturing to be viable and cost-effective, the local industry must be able to compete with international suppliers …
The politics behind the implementation of the WTO Paragraph 6 Decision in Canada to increase global drug access
BACKGROUND: The reform of pharmaceutical policy can often involve trade-offs between competing social and commercial goals. Canada's Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR), a legislative amendment that permits compulsory licensing for the production and export of medicines to developing countries, aimed to reconcile these goals. Since it was passed in 2004, only two orders of antiretroviral drugs, enough for 21,000 HIV/AIDS patients in Rwanda have bee…
Corruption in the health care sector
BACKGROUND: Globally, injuries cause approximately as many deaths per year as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, and 90% of injury deaths occur in low- and middle- income countries. Given not all injuries kill, the disability burden, particularly from orthopaedic injuries, is much higher but is poorly measured at present. The orthopaedic services and orthopaedic medical devices needed to manage the injury burden are frequently unavailab…
An examination of pharmaceutical systems in severely disrupted countries
This research assesses informal markets that dominate pharmaceutical systems in severely disrupted countries and identifies areas for further investigation. Findings are based on recent academic papers, policy and grey literature, and field studies in Somalia, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Haiti. The public sector in the studied countries is characterized in part by weak Ministries of Health and low donor coordination. Informa…
A call for a moratorium on the .health generic top-level domain
In just a few weeks, the Internet could be expanded to include a new .health generic top-level domain name run by a for-profit company with virtually no public health credentials - unless the international community intervenes immediately. This matters to the future of global public health as the "Health Internet" has begun to emerge as the predominant source of health information for consumers and patients. Despite this increasing use and relian…
“To patent or not to patent? the case of Novartis’ cancer drug Glivec in India”
BACKGROUND: Glivec (imatinib mesylate), produced by the pharmaceutical company Novartis, is prescribed in the case of chronic myeloid leukemia, one of the most common blood cancers in eastern countries. After more than a decade of legal battles surrounding its patentability, the Supreme Court of India gave its final decision on April 1st of 2013, rejecting the appeal of the Swiss giant drug manufacturer. In 2006, the Indian Patent Office first re…
Why the MDGs need good governance in pharmaceutical systems to promote global health
Challenges identified in pharmaceutical governance initiatives manifest in different forms depending on the nature and structure of the initiative, but their regular occurrence and impact on population-based health demonstrates growing importance of addressing pharmaceutical governance as a key component of the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals. Specifically, these challenges need to be acknowledged and responded to with global cooperation a…
Does Pharmaceutical Pricing Transparency Matter? Examining Brazil’s Public Procurement System
BACKGROUND: We review procurement and pricing transparency practices for pharmaceutical products. We specifically focus on Brazil and examine its approach to increasing pricing transparency, with the aim of determining the level of effectiveness in lower prices using a tool (Banco de Preços em Saúde, BPS) that only reveals purchase prices as compared to other tools (in other countries) that establish a greater degree of price transparency. METHOD…
Participatory health councils and good governance
Although PHCs are intended to be inclusive and participatory, in practice they seem to have little impact on the health policymaking process in Brazil. PHCs will only be able to fulfil their mandate when we see good governance largely present. This will require a rethinking of their governance structures, processes, membership, and oversight. If change is resisted, the PHCs will remain largely limited to a good idea in theory that is disappointin…
Civil society participation in the health system
BACKGROUND: Brazil created Health Councils to bring together civil society groups, heath professionals, and government officials in the discussion of health policies and health system resource allocation. However, several studies have concluded that Health Councils are not very influential on healthcare policy. This study probes this issue further by providing a descriptive account of some of the challenges civil society face within Brazil's Heal…
Corporate social responsibility to improve access to medicines
BACKGROUND: Access to medicines and the development of a strong national pharmaceutical industry are two longstanding pillars of health policy in Brazil. This is reflected in a clear emphasis by Brazil's Federal Government on improving access to medicine in national health plans and industrial policies aimed at promoting domestic pharmaceutical development. This research proposes that such policies may act as incentives for companies to pursue a …
Matching safety to access
BACKGROUND: The Kenyan government has sought to address inadequacies in its National Pharmaceutical Policy and the Pharmacy and Poisons Board's (PPB) medicines governance by engaging with global actors (e.g. the World Health Organization). Policy actors have influenced the way pharmacovigilance is defined, how challenges are understood and which norms are requisite to address drug safety issues. In this paper, we investigate the relationship betw…
Analyzing the impact of trade and investment agreements on pharmaceutical policy
BACKGROUND: Trade and investment agreements negotiated after the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) have included increasingly elevated protection of intellectual property rights along with an expanding array of rules impacting many aspects of pharmaceutical policy. Despite the large body of literature on intellectual property and access to affordable medicines, the ways in which …
Detection of self-reported experiences with corruption on twitter using unsupervised machine learning
Corruption is a significant challenge to the future of human development, economic progress, and population health in the post millennium. Corruption, in its different forms of bribery, fraud, waste, collusion, and illicit financial flows, not only leads to waste but can also erode trust in government and public systems. Corruption is also complex and globalized with different forms of corruption occurring across different countries and multiple …
Social capital and public health
Exploring anti-corruption, transparency, and accountability in the World Health Organization, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank Group, and the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tubercu…
Corruption is recognized by the global community as a threat to development generally and to achieving health goals, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal # 3: ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all. As such, international organizations such as the World Health Organizations and the United Nations Development Program are creating an evidence base on how best to address corruption in health systems. At present, t…
The risk of corruption in public pharmaceutical procurement
Background: The goal of the public procurement of pharmaceuticals is to purchase sufficient quantities of high-quality pharmaceuticals at cost-effective prices for a given population. This goal can be undercut if corruption infiltrates the procurement process. Good procurement practices can help mitigate the risks of corruption and support equitable access to affordable and high-quality medicines.Objectives: This paper aims to 1) examine manifest…
Global health and human rights in the time of Covid-19
Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted a range of human rights, with the pandemic being used to justify police violence, authoritarian power grabs, and corruption. Health systems in high- and low-income countries have struggled to provide adequate COVID-19 testing, tracing, and treatment, with non-COVID-19 healthcare-restricted, vulnerable populations at high risk of infection and negative health and social impacts, and lockdowns…
The Global Fund
BACKGROUND: The creation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, also known as the Global Fund, was prompted by the lack of a timely and effective global response, and the need for financing to fight against three devastating diseases: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. During the formation of the Global Fund, necessary anti-corruption, transparency, and accountability (ACTA) structures were not put in place to prevent fraud…
Intellectual property and access to medicines
BACKGROUND: Transparency and accountability are essential components at all stages of the trade negotiation process. This study evaluates the extent to which these principles were upheld in the United States' public consultation process during the negotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), with respect to public comments about the pharmaceutical sector and access to medicines. RESULTS: The public consultation process occurr…
A global social contract to ensure access to essential medicines and health technologies
The COVID-19 pandemic illuminates the need to move away from the current social contract, which focuses on the nation-state’s responsibility for protecting the health of its own population, including by providing essential medicines and health technologies. We argue for embracing a global social contract, which is a governance concept that lays the foundation for how states should act as members of the international community, as regulators of th…
Political science (32 works) · Law (26 works) · Medicine (26 works) · Business (24 works) · Public health (22 works) · Economics (17 works) · Public relations (17 works) · Economic growth (15 works) · Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy (15 works) · Health care (14 works)