Announcing New Partnership Opportunities for Industry Members
December 1, 2023
If you attended the recent Iowa Cancer Summit, you know that our staff and board of directors have been working on defining how the Iowa Cancer Consortium engages with members and partners who represent industry. Industry partners are leaders in science and innovation, and have important and unique knowledge, skills, and resources to contribute to cancer control. Thoughtfully and intentionally identifying how industry and non-industry can most productively engage in collaborative cancer control spaces has potential for meaningful impact. The Iowa Cancer Consortium can act as a space in which industry partners connect their resources with grassroots cancer control work while centering the best interests of Iowans and maintaining the objectivity of our work and the safety and respect of member information.
I’m pleased to say that the Iowa Cancer Consortium board of directors approved a carefully developed industry engagement plan and two key supporting policies during their meeting on November 6, 2023. This effort was informed by staff, our board of directors, representatives of health care, and industry partners. For our purposes, industry is defined as venders or commercial/for-profit businesses with a product or service to sell. It does not include organizations or individuals who provide direct health care.
There are three components to this new initiative:
1. The Iowa Cancer Consortium will help industry and other cancer control partners better understand, connect to, and work with each other. This will take shape in different ways over the coming year (and beyond) but serves as the guiding intention for the infrastructure and policy changes outlined below.
We believe that all industry partners and vendors can play a role in cancer control. However, the Consortium is most interested in engaging with industry staff in non-commercial roles, who may:
- Identify as “brand agnostic” or “above brand” and who are engaged in issues of health equity, government affairs and policy, access to care, and medical research.
- Have expertise on important cancer control topics.
- Offer unbranded educational material and presentations.
- Offer co-pay assistance and other financial support.
Regardless of job title or function, the following are suggestions for how industry partners can best show up and engage with the Consortium’s broad and diverse membership:
- Provide access to unbranded materials from across the cancer control spectrum (prevention and risk reduction, early detection, treatment, quality of life, equity, research, policy, etc.).
- Share reimbursement insights and support.
- Share policy/systems change insights and support.
- Come with an interest in understanding state cancer control efforts and building connections between industry and other cancer control partners.
- Come ready to make connections between individuals and organizations within the cancer space.
- Share insight into science, innovation, and the health care system.
Industry partners also have much to gain through engagement with the Consortium, including:
- An understanding of and connection to state cancer control efforts and partners.
- Connection with communities and local efforts.
- Opportunities to collaborate with cancer control partners through co-branding, sponsorship, and more.
2. Individuals representing industry will now join the Consortium through a new individual industry representative membership. Through this new membership level, industry individuals receive many of the same benefits as other individual Consortium members.
Beginning January 1, 2024, there will be no organizational membership option for industry groups. Those that received organizational memberships as part of their 2023 Summit sponsorship package will be phased into the new structure by receiving the following organizational benefits during 2024:
- Logo on industry partner webpage.
- One free 2024 Iowa Cancer Summit registration.
- Individuals identified as members under this sponsorship arrangement at the change of the calendar year will be moved to an individual industry representative membership for 2024 and will receive the membership benefits corresponding to the new individual industry representative membership.
Beginning January 1, industry groups that would like to access organizational-level benefits can reference our new sponsorship and exhibiting menu, explained below.
3. Finally, a larger, more comprehensive sponsorship menu will now be available to industry partners at the beginning of the calendar year. These new opportunities have Iowa Cancer Summit benefits included and will be available annually beginning January 1, 2024. A smaller Iowa Cancer Summit sponsorship package will remain available to non-industry partners, with more details to come as we get closer to fall 2024.
In addition to the changes outlined above, our board of directors updated two policies key to upholding the values guiding this initiative:
What’s next?
Membership renewal emails will start going out next week, with renewals due January 1. At the same time, industry partners will receive information about their new membership option and sponsorship opportunities. Things will look and feel the same for non-industry members.
As with any change within the Consortium, we are open to your input! What questions, comments, and/or concerns do you have about industry engagement or these new practices and policies? Let me know at [email protected].
Thanks for all you do.
