Edwards support for meetings and activities is permissible when the primary purposes of the activity is professional, educational, scientific or otherwise consistent with a patient organization’s mission and is held in appropriate venues with modest meals and refreshments.
Agreements between Edwards and patient organizations will be monitored to ensure that they are executed in line with the proposals and objectives, as agreed upon.
Edwards will neither offer nor withhold funding in return for a patient organization agreeing to:
- Provide product promotion activities (branded or unbranded)
- Promote or endorse Edwards products or services
- Support a campaign that is funded, developed and managed solely by Edwards;
or - Afford special privileges, overt or implied, such as allowing Edwards to direct or unduly influence a meeting agenda, unduly influence educational materials or content, choose speakers at organization-hosted events or influence the outcome of research
Edwards is fully committed to patient organizations establishing and maintaining their independence and autonomy. In support of this, Edwards will not provide financial support to patient organizations if Edwards is the sole source of funding, unless the funding is:
For an event or project, provided:
- The funding is to support a specific event or time-specific project, and
- The event or project is one of several projects the organization has or is organizing during the same calendar year, which are financially supported by others besides Edwards, and
- The opportunity to support the event or project is made available to multiple sponsors.
For a new, start-up patient organization, provided:
- The organization can demonstrate that it must rely on a single source of funding in its set-up phase, and
- The patient organization immediately seeks funding from multiple sources, and
- The patient organization secures and maintains multiple funding sources within, at the latest, 36 months of achieving charitable/ non-profit status