Orphan Drugs Get a Second Look

Nicolas Dragojlovic, well-known science communication and policy researcher, joined the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences as a postdoctoral student, specifically to study the effect of moral arguments on societal values for orphan-drug coverage in the Canadian medical system. Dragojlovic received the 2013 Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Orphan Drug Policy Fellowship and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR) Post-Doctoral Fellow Trainee Award. Dragojlovic’s research will survey 3,000 people and present different scenarios in which provincial health authorities must decide whether or not to fund a specific treatment through the provincial insurance systems.