Kits4Life’s Exponential Growth in Global Health and Sustainability

In this episode, explore the extraordinary journey of Kits4Life with Lori Warrens, Director of the MedSurplus Alliance. Kits4Life is a cross-sector initiative developed by the clinical research community to repurpose clinical trial supplies, lab kits, and equipment to close the healthcare gap worldwide. Lori shares the program's inspiring growth and impact on a global scale, from its humble beginnings to becoming a driving force in healthcare sustainability. Gain insights into the challenges faced, the value of industry collaborations, and the program's role in fostering a sustainable future.

Transcript

Jimmy Bechtel: 0:01

Welcome. And thank you for joining The Society for Clinical Research Sites for SCRS Talks. I'm Jimmy Bechtel, the vice president of site engagement with the society. SCRS Talks allows our partners and those that we work closely with to take a few minutes to address issues of industry concern, share exciting achievements, and to learn more about our extensive community. Today we have Lori Warrens, the Director of the MedSurplus Alliance Program Task Force for Global Health, here to share with us some updates on the Kits4Life program. This has been a longstanding association that we've been very closely tied with since its inception. And we're lucky to have Lori here with us again, to share a little bit more about that organization and some work that they've done recently. Lori, thanks for being with us today. I'd love to start off with your introduction. So our audience can learn a little bit more about you, about the MedSurplus Alliance and Kits4Life.

Lori Warrens: 0:59

Thank you. I'm delighted to be here today. It's been a wonderful association with SCRS from the very beginning of Kits4Life as a concept. And through just our collaboration over the last number of years. So I'm the director of the MedSurplus Alliance, which is a program of the Task Force for Global Health. We focus on eliminating diseases and on strengthening healthcare systems. And so for the MedSurplus Alliance, our focus is making sure that every healthcare provider has the supplies and equipment they need when they need them, where they need them so that no one need die or fail to thrive. Simply because of lack of the kinds of equipment and resources we have here in the United States. Kits4Life came to our attention through Greg Foltz, the founder, and who wanted to find a secure and safe way to, not only manage the program, but also provide a strategy for the industry to adopt donations that were consistent with World Health Organization guidelines for safe donations. And so we were delighted when Greg came to us and asked if we could use the tools and resources that we had at our disposal to provide a platform for this wonderful endeavor.

Jimmy Bechtel: 2:20

Thanks, Lori. And it truly is a noble cause. It's been great to see the growth and I'm excited to talk a little bit more about it today. So as we both alluded to, Kits4Life was actually first introduced to our community in 2016 when that organization won the SCRS Site Tank Competition at the Global Site Solutions Summit. Share with us to start things off a little bit about how that impact has grown since that spark of an idea and a concept in a very young organization to what it is now.

Lori Warrens: 2:54

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think it's exceeded any expectations that we had in terms of, well, everything that you can with a new program. This program has been so embraced by the sponsors and by the sites that we've never had an issue with trying to convince organizations to adopt to be part of it. And so what that has meant is that we've now have the, one of the impacts that has come out of this is that for SCRS members and for life science community in general, there's our members, the individuals involved in both founding Kits4Life and now in operating and the program here in the United States and now in Australia have become real champions for the idea of donating excess products and for the doing it according to standards based program. Okay. So we, have tremendous engagement. And through that has also come introductions to new partners and new ideas. And so in terms of what we originally envisioned and where we are now, it's we've exceeded all expectations. To be a little more specific, we started out with four sponsor organizations By the time it came to the MedService Alliance, we're now talking about 2020, 2021. So in the last, just four to five years or so, we've gone from forming an organization and having four co foundings sponsors and some other supporters like SCRS to now more than 14 that are actively operating a program. And as I said, we started here in the U S we recently expanded to Australia and have conversations to expand to other places and the volume has. We didn't know what to expect and the impact increases now in terms of the amount of product donated by 10 to 25 percent from quarter to quarter. So it's just tremendous growth. And another impact that we're just delighted by is that we originally started out focusing on the kits that have been ordered and placed, but not used. But what we found through the deep discussions that have transpired within the sponsor companies and the other supporting organizations is that in fact there's quite a variety of products that are available to, to donate. And so now we track not just kits and the contents of the kits, but also biomedical equipment devices there's bulk supplies and technology for example, iPhones and notebooks that are used, and those products are now donated and being donated through the Kits4Life program and finding their way to not just organizations outside side of the US or what I would call maybe a low resource or a setting, though that is the primary target has been and will be but also organizations that are training healthcare workers, for example, phlebotomy training programs, or are training the next generation of scientists through STEM programs. And so we've had to expand how we think about what products are available and expand the strategy to get them to health care providers, but also those individuals and organizations that are supporting and training the next generation of health care providers And then the last thing I just would want to mention is that we originally, the original concept was that one of the benefits for Kits4Life included Saving time at the site level saving the time that it took to break down boxes, sort them destroy them and to and also address that concern that the sites had, that it was just a waste to be throwing products away or destroying them in some way. And so this last year we conducted a site engagement survey. And asked several questions to determine the impact that their experience with Kits4Life had had so far. And the results were, were positive. Significant amount of time being saved. The relationship with the sponsors strengthened and their sense of contributing to sustainability efforts also reinforced. And so it's just a significant impact and from a patient level, we're measuring more and more the impact that some of the donations are having on at the individual patient level. But that's a, that's sort of an overall view of just what's been an explosive growth of this program and concept.

Jimmy Bechtel: 7:28

Truly Lori, it's really amazing to hear how much has been accomplished in less than far less than 10 years that the organization Kits4Life specifically has been in existence. It really is really is inspiring. It's obvious that there has been a tremendous need and it's great to see exactly the direction that the organization has headed and what they've been able to, which I know we'll talk a little bit more about as we get into some of our other questions here. But you know despite all that wonderful growth and everything, I'm sure that the organization encountered challenges along the way. So can you talk a little bit about what some of those challenges were as the organization has expanded and maybe some insight into how those challenges were then overcome?

Lori Warrens: 8:14

Yeah, so as you've heard before from others including myself, that convincing organizations to participate in Kits4Life has never been a challenge. It's just the idea has sold itself and the enthusiasm people bring to the project has been tremendous. The primary challenge has been incorporating what is now a new program or process into the operations of a sponsor company or in the case of maybe CRO or, or other partner organization. And so we spent the first few years really working with each sponsor to ask the question. And answer the questions of who needs to be involved? Who are the right people? How do we get their engagement in creating what would be a new donation process for a sponsor? And then what are the steps that we need to take? We're talking about products that, they're valuable and they require the same kind of care that you would if you if they were being distributed in any other fashion, but the agreements had not been developed yet. All the risks had not been identified in that yet. And so for the first few years, that's really what we were doing with each partner, is building now a Onboarding process that included everything from setting up the first team through creating the agreements to piloting the initial transactions and donations and then providing reports back to all of the players. And of course, all the training and education that would be involved in between. So that was the biggest challenge. And the way we did it, and I think this was, I don't take credit for this, but I think it was very smart that Greg and some of the early partners working on this does that decided to develop work streams that staffed by volunteers from the organizations, the different sponsors that were joining. And each work stream took on one of these major tasks. So I just described onboarding as one of the tasks. There are other tasks that came with this. And so we had industry experts. The advantage of that was we had very enthusiastic individuals. Charged by their companies with onboarding this new program, and they had the expertise to ask the right questions and to understand what needed to be done. If I had tried to do that, we'd still be talking about it because I just am not an expert in that industry. And so they took ownership of that and built the systems that we're using today. Going forward, our next challenge really, and that's maybe your next question, not to get ahead of you, but going forward, our next, our really next challenge is just scaling. There's a lot of demand for what the program is accomplishing. There's a tremendous amount of need for the products that are being donated. So we're now looking very much at what's the next level look like? How do we scale up?

Jimmy Bechtel: 11:11

That's great, Lori. And it's. It's also inspiring to hear how those challenges had overcome and thank you for the kind of concrete examples of that. We know as an industry the challenge you mentioned towards the former part of your answer there around kind of tapping into getting the ear of whatever you want to call it. Of these large, large organizations finding the right routes and getting the buy in from them is a challenge that this industry has faced kind of tail as old as time really when it comes to that so inspiring again to hear how you've worked through that and overcome that challenge. And it sounds like as well. You both have a solid team working with you to help drive some of that work forward. So let's talk a little bit more about those industry partners. And like you had mentioned, you work with a lot of them as part of your advisory council and those that are members and, and drive some of this work forward. So how do these collaborations? Then further the work and mission of Kits4Life. What is their foundation? What is the purpose? I guess is another way to put it for what these collaborations do and how they help Kits4Life.

Lori Warrens: 12:25

I guess I'll start with the steering committee, and the steering committee includes the founding partners for Kits4Life, and then other sponsors that have agreed to contribute at a level that helps us to build out the systems to implement and scale the program, as I mentioned. And each of them has comes to that committee with we let them know what areas we think need to be addressed in terms of either building the program or overcoming a challenge. And they choose one or more that they're very interested in supporting and with expertise and individual effort. And and that has been essential to the speed that we've been able to implement this program. The precision is everything. It's messy when you're working with large organizations, but with these champions and the expertise that they had, they've been able to sort of narrow our. Accelerate really the implementation of this program, and and they come in taking ownership, not only of Kits4Life broadly, but also of particular tasks or functions that we're working on, and again, without the level of people that have been committed by these companies to give this type of leadership and, and just, I mean, only time to what we're doing. We would not be where we are. The other thing that they've done to further the work and further the mission is they've become champions. They, they came to this typically because inside their organization, perhaps they had a role around sustainability or personally, they have a passion for it. And as they've really educated themselves about not just what we're trying to do with Kits4Life, but the problems that we're trying to solve worldwide regarding a lack of connection between resources available the need they become very champions that are able to describe in very sometimes personal terms. Why this is important and why quality matters? So why working with an accredited organization matters. And it's the pond and it's the stone in the pond and the ripple effect. And that's really a big part of the task force mission. The MedService Alliance is to create champions for connecting quality products and resources to where they're needed.

Jimmy Bechtel: 14:41

That's great Lori, I think it's really valuable to hear insights around how some of the techniques that you've used, I think that buy-in that the, the actual labor buy-in giving them the opportunity for leadership to drive some of the initiatives and the work and the projects forward is really crucial to maintaining. Not only diversity in the work that's being done and bringing in those different perspectives to drive that work forward, but also, like you had said, enables the passion to come out and gets I think it really does speak to how you were able to drive so much work forward. In these last few years. So thank you for sharing that. I think it's a valuable insight for our listeners to take back to their organizations. And as far as a method for getting further buy-in into work that is being driven forward, not only at the site level, but also at sponsor and CRO level. So again, thank you for sharing that truly valuable insight. Lori, we're beginning to wrap things up here. A final question. How can organizations and other members of the clinical research community learn more about Kits4Life, or maybe even get involved with the work that you all are doing?

Lori Warrens: 15:54

Yeah, I would invite you to visit kitsforlife. com. It'll take you to the website pages which are embedded in the MedService Alliance website overall. So you can learn more about Kits4Life and click on the info link and it'll get to me. I also could provide my contact information to be provided through the podcast and I would welcome you to contact me directly. And I would also encourage you to take a look at some other parts of the website just so that you can see a little bit more too about what we're, when I refer to an accredited medical surplus recovery organization, what does that mean? And why does that matter?

Jimmy Bechtel: 16:34

Wonderful, Lori. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here with us today and sharing more about Kits4Life, but also sharing. More about the journey that Kits4Life has been on and the important milestones and steps and some of the methods that you've used to drive the growth of that truly wonderful organization helping out the world in one relatively large way. It's been great and inspiring to hear more about that story again. Thank you for sharing those insights and being with us today.

Lori Warrens: 17:05

No, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Jimmy Bechtel: 17:07

For everyone listening, make sure that you consider registering for our upcoming summits being held throughout the year by visiting our summit page on our website, myscrs. org. While you're on our website, be sure to check out other SCRS publications and resources for the community in the publications and member benefits section of that same website. We appreciate your participation in today's program and look forward to having you join us for more great content coming out soon. Thanks again for listening.