Mass Defections of Key Staff after Take-over of Futures Group

In the 18 months since the full take-over of the Futures Group, there have been mass defections of numerous key management, technical, and finance staff. Many of these departing staff had been with the company for years and were instrumental in building the Futures Group programs and human capacity. The list includes very senior managers and officers, center directors, project directors, and internationally-known technical experts in reproductive health and HIV/AIDS.

In the U.S. alone, Futures has lost about 40 percent of the technical and management staff it had when Constella took over. A total of 16 senior staff at the officer or director levels departed, and numerous mid-and lower level technical and administrative staff have followed them. The following are some of the job titles of these critical staff members:

• Vice President and Director of the Center for Analysis and Modeling
• Chief Operating Officer
• Director of the Center for Policy Development
• Managing Director, Futures Group - Europe
• President of Futures Group International, Vice President of Futures Holding, Futures Europe, and the Institute of Sustainable Development
• Vice President, and Former Director of Center for Private Sector Solutions and Director Center for Policy & Advocacy
• Vice President - Operations
  
• Director Center of International Health
• Former Director Center for International Health
• Director of Center for Private Sector Solutions
• Director of the Center for Analysis and Modeling
• Deputy Director Futures Group - Europe
• Director of the HPI Project
• Deputy Director Center for HIV/AIDS
• CFO Futures Group and Futures Europe
  
• Director of Human Resources
• Manager of Communications

Many of these experienced staff members also served as project directors for the company and were well-known and regarded by the company's main sponsors in USAID, DfID, and the Gates Foundation. In all, more than 50 individuals quit the company in the year and a half after the take over. Industry observers report that this is an extraordinarily high level of defections under any circumstances, and that it will no doubt affect the firm’s ability to expand it work in international health.

Insiders and former employees cite various reasons for the mass defections. Among these are severe cuts in benefits and overall remuneration, below industry average annual increases, reductions in holidays, and sick leave. For example, the 401k match was drastically reduced in 2006. Many former and current staff have also cited poor management and communications practices, senior management arrogance, and misrepresentations about the adverse impacts of the take-over on staff remuneration and benefits. It has been recently reported that Constella has been unable to fill several key management and technical positions despite months of recruiting.

Conflict of Interst: Greasing The Skids For HPV Vaccine

Some may not be surprised to hear that HPV is officially listed as a known carcinogen. But how many people know that the company that placed HPV on the federal government list has numerous drugmakers, including Merck and Glaxo, as clients? And that the company placed HPV on the list while Merck and Glaxo were developing HPV vaccines?

The scenario sounds like a conflict of interest, especially after considering that the Constella Group, whose official advisers include former US Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson, added HPV within three months of receiving a $6.6 million government contract to compile a list of carcinogens. The contract was awarded four years ago. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on May 5 that a congressional investigation of this and possible other similar possible conflicts of interest was being contenpleted.

Constella has received more than $246 million from federal agencies in the past seven years while also working for drugmakers the government oversees, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. Constella says it has internal controls to prevent conflicts of interest between its government duties and its work for drugmakers, but the government doesn't require corporate contractors to disclose their private-sector clients.

Constella won't discuss its work for drugmakers, saying the info is confidential, but its government clients include the FDA, the CDC, and the NIH, which paid Constella $6.6 million to update and oversee the carcinogen list. The firm also won a separate $21 million contract to monitor and report vaccine side effects. Major vaccine-makers that Constella has listed as clients on archived editions of its web site include, Novartis, Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca.

Don Holzworth, Constella's CEO, says the firm has its own ethics board and other measures to protect against conflicts. "If we found ourselves in that situation, we'd remove ourselves from that situation. There is too much at stake to allow something like that to happen."

To fulfill the contract, Constella had to review nominations for the list, choose scientific literature to prepare technical reports, and draft a final report - all of which had in past years been conducted by government scientists.

“I was on this project back in the day,” says Jim Huff, associate director for chemical cardinogenesis at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, “at a time when it was decided by us in the institute which chemicals should be considered” (to be included in the report). “It’s the only list of known or reasonably anticipated carcinogens in the United States that’s official. It has a significant impact in this country, in particular, and around the world.”

In other words, the problem is outsourcing. To cut back, federal agencies are giving industry a greater role in making such important decisions. And that sets up the potential for conflicts. But if there’s no oversight, who does the public rely on to prevent or remedy a conflict?

http://www.pharmalot.com/2007/04/greasing_the_skids_for_hpv_vac.php
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=601378

Constella Pays Major Lobbying Firm for Access

After taking on Tommy Thompson as the Chairman of its influential Advisory Board, Constella made a $180,000 payment to Thompson's firm, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, for unspecified lobbying services. The company's CEO Holzworth told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that, "He can make introductions for us." Thompson, as a member of President Bush's cabinet, oversaw many of the agencies that Constella works for today. "The majority of our business is through relationships with public agencies, both in the U.S. and foreign governments."

At the same time, Constella hired Thompson's longtime friend, Stewart Simonson, as a Vice President for "emergency health preparedness" - a field in which Constella has very little experience. (See 2006 entries below for more information.)

Susanne Rust and Cary Spivak, "Drug-testing industry turns to private sector", Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 1, 2007.
"Constella Group: Client Summary, 2006" Opensecrets.org, accessed May 2007.
"Report: Research company hired by feds denies conflict on virus", Associated Press, April 30, 2007.