ICER Elects Patient and Consumer Advocacy Experts to Governance Board

–New members reflect ICER’s long-standing commitment to multi-stakeholder engagement–

Boston, Mass., July 21, 2016 –– The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) has announced the appointment of two new members to its Governance Board. Ellen Andrews, PhD and Frances Visco, JD both join the Governance Board with extensive experience in patient and consumer advocacy. The Governance Board has fiduciary responsibility for the overall operations of ICER, and its members work closely with ICER’s Advisory Board to provide important strategic counsel to ICER’s leadership team. The Governance Board and the Advisory Board together represent a broad range of stakeholder perspectives, including patient and consumer groups, health plans, manufacturers, and other national leaders in health policy.

“These two leaders bring to ICER’s Governance Board tremendous skills honed through years of experience fighting for access to high-quality health care and for the evidence that patients need to participate fully in their health care decisions,” noted ICER’s President Steven D. Pearson, MD, MSc. “This is part of our long-standing plan to augment this perspective among the members of our Governance and Advisory Boards as ICER grows. I know that Ellen and Fran are superbly prepared to join with other Board members in assuring that ICER’s strategic direction and all our efforts are informed by the patient voice.”

Ellen Andrews, PhD

Ellen Andrews has spent the past 16 years as the Executive Director for the Connecticut Health Policy Project, a consumer advocacy nonprofit organization working to expand access to high quality, affordable health care for every Connecticut resident. The Project provides research and analysis of health policy issues for patients, advocates, legislators and other key stakeholders, provides direct consumer assistance and support including a toll-free helpline, and works to build consumer advocacy capacity. Among her publications, Ms. Andrews authored a book documenting the impact on eight families as a parent lost Medicaid coverage. The book was instrumental in restoring coverage for working parents. She develops multi-media resources to make health policy accessible and regularly provides advocacy training for consumers and advocacy groups. She served on the legislative staff of the Public Health Committee for the Connecticut General Assembly, was a health policy consultant for several consumer-centered non-profits, directed the children’s program at a battered women’s shelter, and worked as a perinatal educator at a community health center. As staff and later a member of Connecticut’s Medical Assistance Program Oversight Council, she helped design and implement delivery and payment reforms that improved access to care, expanded physician participation in the program and significantly lowered per person costs of care for consumers served by Medicaid. Ms. Andrews is an assistant professor in Public Health at Southern Connecticut State University. She has also held faculty positions at Trinity College and the Yale University School of Nursing. She earned a Ph.D. in Human Genetics from Yale University.

Frances Visco, JD

Fran Visco is the first President of the National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC) and a member of its Board of Directors. NBCC is a grassroots advocacy coalition of more than 600 organizations and tens of thousands of individual members. Under President Clinton, Ms. Visco served on the President’s Cancer Panel. In addition, she chaired the Integration Panel of the Department of Defense Peer-Reviewed Breast Cancer Research Program, co-chaired the National Action Plan on Breast Cancer, and served on the National Cancer Policy Board. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of Translational Research in Oncology, an international non-profit clinical trials consortium. Ms. Visco has been appointed to several Institute of Medicine panels and served as a member of the IOM Roundtable on Evidence Based Medicine. She is a previous member of the Board of Directors of Women’s Way in Philadelphia, the nation’s oldest and largest women’s funding federation. Ms. Visco is a more than 25-year breast cancer survivor. She resides in Philadelphia with her husband; they are the parents of a 30 year-old son.

About ICER
The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) is an independent non-profit research institute that produces reports analyzing the evidence on the effectiveness and value of drugs and other medical services. ICER’s reports include evidence-based calculations of prices for new drugs that accurately reflect the degree of improvement expected in long-term patient outcomes, while also highlighting price levels that might contribute to unaffordable short-term cost growth for the overall health care system.

ICER’s reports incorporate extensive input from all stakeholders and are the subject of public hearings through three core programs: the California Technology Assessment Forum (CTAF), the Midwest Comparative Effectiveness Public Advisory Council (Midwest CEPAC) and the New England Comparative Effectiveness Public Advisory Council (New England CEPAC). These independent panels review ICER’s reports at public meetings to deliberate on the evidence and develop recommendations for how patients, clinicians, insurers, and policymakers can improve the quality and value of health care. For more information about ICER, please visit ICER’s website.