Medicines360 CEO, Tina Raine-Bennett, MD, MPH, FACOG, Offers Her Thoughts on The Year Ahead

Happy New Year!

We hope this message finds you and your families well.

Collectively, we have witnessed and experienced significant change and growth over the past 12 months. Hopefully, we all had a chance to pause to celebrate the goodness, kindness, generosity, and spirit of the holiday season, while embracing the potential of a brighter future. 

The year 2021 can best be characterized as one of transition. One of the many changes that the year brought included my own professional move from research scientist and clinician at Kaiser Permanente to Chief Executive Officer of Medicines360. As a board-certified OB/GYN, I dedicated the first half of my career to providing family planning services for teens and underserved women, and conducting research to understand reproductive health needs. At a time when women across the globe continue to lack equitable access to affordable and effective medicines, I’m excited to have assumed the leadership of an organization addressing unmet health needs by bringing affordable medicines and devices to market.

When Medicines360 was founded more than a decade ago, it was the first nonprofit pharmaceutical organization focused on Women’s Health in the U.S. and globally; combining the rigor and expertise of a commercial pharmaceutical company with the pro-social mission of a nonprofit. Fueled by an initial investment of philanthropic capital, our focus remains on developing accessible and affordable products for women as a means of reducing health inequities.

Today – across government, business, academia, and the social sectors, we have the collective knowledge, resources, and technical acumen to positively impact the health of women. Yet our social sector investments don’t always reflect the values and principles of fairness and respect. Drug prices continue to be a significant driver of high medical costs, often forcing individuals and families into the unimaginable choice between financial security and getting the care they need. These decisions are driven by corporate goals that prioritize profits over sustainable prices that ensure accessibility to necessary medicines.

However, Medicines360 believes we can move beyond the profit-maximizing paradigm of our traditional system; to imagine new ways of meeting the health needs of women. These ideas are not mutually exclusive. The nonprofit pharma model can be an innovative force within our healthcare industry. Free from the need to maximize profits for shareholders, nonprofit pharmaceutical organizations can close critical gaps left in women’s health, increasing access to important drugs and devices, and improving health equity.

Over its 12-year history, Medicines360 has demonstrated what a mission-driven, nonprofit pharmaceutical organization can deliver. We have supplied our hormonal IUD to over 300,000 low-income women in over 2,500 public health clinics in the U.S. and are poised to supply women across the globe with the hormonal IUD at an affordable price. And while we are proud of our innovative model to increase access to effective contraception, we also continue to ask what more can be done. That includes being more reflective about the lessons we’ve learned and sharing that knowledge.

In moving forward on our new strategic plan, we are setting out to apply our learnings to develop other critical products to meet pressing needs in women’s health. This includes continuing to partner with committed individuals, organizations, governments, media, and the private sector –– conducting research and development, as well as advocating for policy changes that improve women’s access to health.

I am proud to lead the next chapter in our journey as we work toward a vision where women everywhere can access the medicines they need and deepen our partnerships with the many organizations working to create equitable access to care.

On behalf of the staff and Board of Medicines360, best wishes for a healthy and Happy New Year.

Warmly,

Tina Raine-Bennett, MD, MPH, FACOG
Chief Executive Officer
Medicines360

About Medicines360

Located in San Francisco, California, Medicines360 is a global nonprofit pharmaceutical organization with a mission to accelerate the timeline from health innovation to access for all women. Medicines360 is committed to working with healthcare providers, advocacy groups, and patients to deliver innovative and meaningful treatments that help women around the world have greater access to the medicines they need. For more information, visit www.medicines360.org.

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AVIBELA can be made available in the following 88 countries

  1. Algeria
  2. Angola
  3. Bangladesh
  4. Belize
  5. Benin
  6. Bhutan
  7. Botswana
  8. Burkina Faso
  9. Burundi
  10. Cambodia
  11. Cameroon
  12. Cape Verde
  13. Central African Republic
  14. Chad
  15. Comoros
  16. Costa Rica
  17. Cuba
  18. Democratic Republic of the Congo
  19. Djibouti
  20. Dominica
  21. Dominican Republic
  22. Egypt
  23. El Salvador
  24. Equatorial Guinea
  25. Eritrea
  26. Ethiopia
  27. Gabon
  28. Ghana
  29. Grenada
  30. Guatemala
  31. Guinea
  32. Guinea-Bissau
  33. Haiti
  34. Honduras
  35. India
  36. Indonesia
  37. Ivory Coast
  38. Jamaica
  39. Kenya
  40. Lao PDR
  41. Lesotho
  42. Liberia
  43. Libya
  44. Madagascar
  45. Malawi
  46. Malaysia
  47. Maldives
  48. Mali
  49. Mauritania
  50. Mauritius
  51. Mayotte
  52. Morocco
  53. Mozambique
  54. Myanmar
  55. Namibia
  56. Nepal
  57. Nicaragua
  58. Niger
  59. Nigeria
  60. Pakistan
  61. Panama
  62. Papua New Guinea
  63. Philippines
  64. Republic of the Congo
  65. Rwanda
  66. Sao Tome and Principe
  67. Senegal
  68. Seychelles
  69. Sierra Leone
  70. Somalia
  71. South Africa
  72. South Sudan
  73. Sri Lanka
  74. Kitts and Nevis
  75. Lucia
  76. Vincent & the Grenadines
  77. Sudan
  78. Swaziland
  79. Tanzania
  80. Thailand
  81. The Gambia
  82. Timor-Leste
  83. Togo
  84. Tunisia
  85. Uganda
  86. Vietnam
  87. Zambia
  88. Sri Lanka

Tina Raine-Bennett, MD, MPH, FACOG

Chief Executive Officer

Tina Raine-Bennett, MD, MPH, is CEO of Medicines360. Previously, she served as a senior research scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research and the research director of the Women’s Health Research Institute. She is a Board-Certified Obstetrician Gynecologist who received her medical training at the University of California, San Diego, and post-graduate residency training and MPH at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she also completed a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Fellowship. She was also senior staff physician at Kaiser Permanente and has a special interest in family planning and adolescent reproductive health.

As the director of the Women’s Health Research Institute, Dr. Raine-Bennett focused on expanding research on women’s health within the Division and translating women’s health research into clinical practice and policy within the Ob/Gyn departments in Northern California. She also promoted the involvement of clinicians in research designed to improve the health outcomes and healthcare experiences of women at Kaiser Permanente and women in general.

Prior to Kaiser Permanente, Dr. Raine-Bennett was a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She was based at San Francisco General Hospital where she was also the medical director of the New Generation Health Center, a UCSF affiliate site that provides community-based reproductive health services. Dr. Raine-Bennett’s research has focused on contraceptive methods and on elucidating factors that influence contraceptive choice and continuation, and she was principal investigator on NIH grants to assess hormonal contraceptive use predictors and develop interventions to improve contraceptive access.

Her past and current research on emergency contraception has focused on the safety of making emergency contraception more accessible and she conducted a pivotal clinical trial to make emergency contraception available to teens without a prescription. She served on the editorial board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and has over 100 peer-reviewed publications. She was the Treasurer of the Board of Directors for the Society of Family Planning and Society of Family Planning Research Fund. She has also served as an examiner for the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and on national committees for the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the National Medical Board of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.