Harvard faculty behind FDA course discusses high Rx prices
The U.S. has the world’s highest per-person spending rate on prescription drugs — a fact that ranges from problematic to life-threatening for consumers of these drugs. A new course launched this year on the HarvardX online platform, “The FDA and Prescription Drugs: Current Controversies in Context,” provides a free opportunity to learn and discuss how the Food and Drug Administration operates, how it regulates drug pricing, and what that looks like in an international context. Last week, a few of the faculty behind the course brought this information into the community, presenting some of the coursework to a group of Allston-Brighton and Greater Boston residents at the Harvard Ed Portal. Brigham and Women’s epidemiologist Ameet Sarpatwari; Jonathan Darrow, a lawyer with the Brigham’s division of pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacoeconomics; and Ariel Stern, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School focusing on health care management, each gave a short presentation on their area of...