The 2007 Social Enterprise Conference happened at Harvard Business School this past weekend.

8:45 am

The Keynote speakers, Cheryl Dorsey of Echoing Green and Victoria Hale of One World Health were introduced by Bill Shore, founding Board member Share our Strength.

I’ll talk more about Cheryl later as I went to a very good panel discussion with her, Yasmina Zaidman of Acumen Fund and Sarah Di Troia of New Profit. I also should note that EG is a major funder of AIDG and that their grant of seed capital as well as help with capacity building have been transformative for us. Okay, I’ll save the EG lovefest for later.

Victoria Hale - Institute for One World Health

Here are the basics of what One World Health does.

• ID potential new drugs for diseases that disproportionately affect the poor in developing countries.
• Assess the safety and effectiveness of investigational meds.
• Establish partnerships for manufacture and distribution of meds. For distributiont hey work with governments, social entrepreneurs, private healthcare providers and NGOs.
• Ensure that meds will actually be affordable. This can also involve engaging in long term policy discussions.

Much of the stuff from her speech, I imagine is available on their website, so I’m going to focus on the bright spots.

A big focus for their work is to engage with Big Pharma, not to compete with them and not to duplicate the already available resources. Basically the best people in the world to do the job of drug research is the pharmaceutical industry. The trick is to create the environment where they will focus on the forgotten diseases of the poor. One World Health creates a bridge between industry and the private sector and strategizes for sustainability.

Early Success story: Visceral Leishmaniasis aka kala azar. VL is a nasty disease caused by a protozoa transmitted by a sandfly. There are a different types of leishmaniasis, but VL predominantly occurs in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sudan, and Brazil. The disease often presents with AIDS like symptoms because of its effects on the hematopoietic system (think bone marrow where red blood cells and immune cells are produced). Other symptoms include fever, weight loss, and an enlarged spleen and liver. Without treatment, it can kill you.

From the NYTimes: A Small Charity Takes Lead in Fighting a Disease

For its first project, the San Francisco charity, the Institute for OneWorld Health, focused on reclaiming the all but abandoned drug, paromomycin, which research found promising in the 1960’s.

That was the easy part. Its hurdles lay elsewhere. The Internal Revenue Service at first denied the charity nonprofit status, concerned that it looked too much like a for-profit enterprise. The World Health Organization, which controlled the drug, was reluctant to hand over the data needed for further development. And OneWorld Health had to set up clinical trials matching United States and European standards in one of the poorest parts of the world.

Read the rest of the NYT piece, it’s really interesting. Lost story short, cost per cure for VL: $10. Woo hoo!

A good bit of advice from Hale:

If you are a social entrepreneur, make sure that your initial program is the right size for you. Success first, scale later. Why? If you are doing something really innovative, you will have a lot of doubters along the way. Early success quiets the naysayers and builds trust that you pull off the other “crazy” ideas that you have. Prove the model.

Lessons learned

• Don’t expect industry /corporations to know what needs to be done to help the poorest people.
• All corporations want to do well and do good (though we all know that many favor doing well- CFL)
• Respect the capacity and potential of industry
• Develop deep and trusting relationships
• The Carrot is better than the stick
• ASK: What do you need in order to engage/commit?
• ASK: What are you afraid of?
• Balance patience with persistence

Along the lines of the “carrot works better than the stick”, Hale gives several examples of pharmaceuticals (finally) getting on board initiatives to provide drugs for diseases that disproportionately effect the poor. Merck led the way. The other companies needed help with replication.

One World Health funders: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Skoll, MacArthur, Ashoka, Schwab, etc.

HBS Social Enterprise Conference

Morning Keynote
Panel 1
Panel 2
Panel 3

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