CARY, NC (June 11, 2014) – At its annual Gala held at the Mellon Auditorium in Washington, DC, Project HOPE presented its 2014 Global Health Impact Award to the CEO Roundtable on Cancer. The Global Health Impact Award provides Project HOPE with the opportunity to honor a peer non-profit organization achieving significant advances in global health. In addition to its ongoing, global, workplace health and wellness efforts through its CEO Cancer Gold Standard accreditation program, Project HOPE noted the leadership of the CEO Roundtable in promoting much–needed sharing of critical clinical trial data in oncology.
“I cannot think of another organization more befitting of this honor than the CEO Roundtable on Cancer,” said John P. Howe, III, M.D., President and CEO of Project HOPE. The CEO Roundtable remains committed to fulfilling the mandate of President George H. W. Bush to ‘be bold and venturesome’ and making great strides in the global effort to address cancer.”
“This recognition is especially gratifying as it comes from a non-profit peer and partner in the global health effort,” said Dr. Martin J. Murphy, Jr., chief executive officer of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer. “The fact that Project HOPE and the CEO Roundtable have both been inspired and shaped by the incomparable Dr. Charles Sanders, makes it even more meaningful.”
The CEO Cancer Gold Standard™ was created by the CEO Roundtable on Cancer, a non-profit organization of CEOs founded by former President George H. W. Bush, in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute, many of its designated cancer centers, and leading health non-profit organizations and professionals. Gold Standard accreditation recognizes employers’ commitment to reducing cancer risk by promoting healthy lifestyle choices, encouraging early detection through cancer screenings, and ensuring access to quality treatment for their own employees and their covered family members.
Since 2013, the CEO Roundtable on Cancer-China has been working with government, industry and international cancer experts to build on the now four and a half million employees and family members benefiting from the vision and leadership of Gold Standard employers and share the benefits of this CEO-driven wellness and prevention model in China.
Project HOPE also noted the CEO Roundtable’s efforts in the promotion of clinical trial data sharing to advance cancer research and innovation. Project Data Sphere, LLC (PDS), an independent not-for-profit initiative of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer’s Life Sciences Consortium (LSC), launched earlier this year a new data–sharing platform, with the goal of advancing research to improve the lives of cancer patients and their families around the world. The CEO Roundtable on Cancer was established in 2001 with the mandate to bring bold and imaginative solutions to cancer care.
This platform has been specifically designed to provide one place where the community can broadly share, integrate and analyze historical patient level, comparator arm data from academic and industry phase III cancer clinical trials. Initial data sets were provided by AstraZeneca, Bayer, Celgene, Janssen Research and Development, an affiliate of Johnson & Johnson, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Pfizer, and Sanofi US. Other organizations, including the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology (sponsored by the National Cancer Institute), Amgen, and Quintiles have also committed to provide additional cancer data sets.
In order to ensure that researchers can realize the full potential of this data, Project Data Sphere, LLC teamed with CEO Roundtable member SAS Institute Inc. (SAS), a leader in data and health analytics, to provide state-of-the-art analytic tools available to registered users within the online environment. For more information and resources, please visit www.ProjectDataSphere.org.
In 2013, the CEO Roundtable on Cancer and its Life Sciences Consortium presented its inaugural Charles A. Sanders Life Sciences Awards to Hogan Lovells, Sanofi and SAS, in recognition of their innovative and collaborative work on the Project Data Sphere initiative.
“The work of these three organizations exemplify the ethos of Charlie Sanders and his belief that great innovation happens best through great collaboration,” said Dr. Herbert Boyer, founder of Genentech, who co-chaired the award selection committee along with Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann, Chief Executive Officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Charles A. Sanders Award was named in honor of Dr. Sanders, who is the longest-serving Chairman in Project HOPE’s 55-year history. Sanders is the former chairman and CEO of Glaxo, Inc. (now GlaxoSmithKline) and the immediate past chairman of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Sanders has been the force behind the development of many innovative pharmaceutical products and has helped to shape health education and medical research in the United States. A renowned scientist, educator, philanthropist, medical doctor and administrator, Sanders represents the tenets of leadership, innovation and collaboration that the Life Sciences Consortium encourages and catalyzes, as charged by the founder of the CEO Roundtable, President George H. W. Bush.
About the CEO Roundtable on Cancer
The CEO Roundtable on Cancer was founded in 2001, when former President George H.W. Bush challenged a group of executives to “do something bold and venturesome about cancer within your own corporate families.” The CEOs responded by creating the CEO Cancer Gold Standard™ (www.CancerGoldStandard.org) which calls for organizations to evaluate their health benefits and workplace culture and take extensive, concrete actions in five key areas of health and wellness. Since 2013, CEO Roundtable on Cancer-China has been working with government, industry and international cancer experts to share the benefits of a CEO-driven approach to both employee wellness and research innovation in China. The Life Sciences Consortium (LSC) (www.ceo-lsc.org) was formed by the CEO Roundtable as a means of bringing together leading oncology pharmaceutical/ biotechnology companies to deliver more effective oncology therapies to patients faster by collaborating on solving issues common to all life sciences organizations engaged in drug discovery and development that cannot be solved by any single company alone. In 2014, Project Data Sphere, LLC (PDS), an independent, not-for-profit initiative of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer’s Life Sciences Consortium (LSC), launched the Project Data Sphere platform (www.ProjectDataSphere.org) providing one place where the research community can broadly share, integrate and analyze historical, patient-level cancer phase III comparator-arm data with the goal of advancing future research to improve the lives of cancer patients and their families around the world. For more information, please visit www.CEORoundtableOnCancer.org.
For more information:
CEO Roundtable on Cancer
Therese Martin, Project Assistant
P: 919-531-3123