Kirsten Axelsen
Senior Policy Advisor
DLA Piper
Kirsten Axelsen, MS, is a senior policy advisor to DLA Piper, where she works with leaders in life sciences to navigate policy, competition, reimbursement, and public perception. Kirsten brings more than 25 years of experience in the innovative pharmaceutical industry. She has written, spoken, and published on the implications of biopharmaceutical regulation and policy on access to medicine. Kirsten is also a visiting scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and an Aspen Institute Health Innovator Fellow and founded the Preparedness and Treatment Equity Coalition. She holds an MS In Economics from the University of Texas, Austin.
Recent Publications
Evidence to Inform Biopharmaceutical Policy: A Call for Research on the Impact of Public Policies on Investment in Drug Development
The scope and magnitude of the trade-off between immediate savings from lower drug prices and future health benefits from clinical development remain poorly understood and quantified. To support rigorous evaluations and inform evidence-based policymaking, it is crucial to invest in this area through research grants and improved access to federal and private data.
Evidence-Based Biopharmaceutical Policymaking: Symposium Report
There is a need for more rigorous evidence and more recent, high-quality data to inform biopharmaceutical policymaking by shedding light on the relationship between pharmaceutical firms’ expectations of financial returns from new drugs and their ability to invest in further R&D to discover future generations of drugs.
The Relationship Between Biopharma R&D Investment and Expected Returns: Improving Evidence to Inform Policy
Better evidence is needed to evaluate the impact of policy changes on new drug development. Greater availability of government data should support more rigorous evaluations to inform evidence-based policymaking.
