Abbott (Abbott Park, IL) is providing support through the Abbott Foundation, the company’s philanthropic arm, to California’s Healthcare Laboratory Workforce Initiative, a program initiated by the Hospital Council of Northern and Central California, to more than double the number of hospitals that provide onsite clinical training for aspiring laboratory science workers. The program hopes to address the need for laboratory professionals, which are expected to be in shortfall. Abbott cites federal estimates that put the need for new medical laboratory professionals at 140,000 by 2012 with only 50,000 expected to be trained by that time.

The Amgen Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Amgen (Thousands Oaks, CA) is supporting an online competition (The Patients, Choices, and Empowerment competition) with Ashoka'sChangemakers, an organization for connecting social entrepreneurs with projects to find solutions to improve health outcomes for patients globally by tapping into the medical experience and knowledge of current and past patients, healthcare practitioners, advocates, and other key stakeholders to ensure that patients have an active role in their personal healthcare. The ideal solutions empower the patient and provide avenues for informed decisions, according to Amgen. The competition takes place at www.changemakers.com/empower-patient where visitors can enter the competition, discuss and share ideas related to patient empowerment, comment on entries, and vote for the finalists. Finalists will be selected by an expert panel of judges based on innovation, social impact, and sustainability. Three winners will be awarded $10,000 each. Entries will be accepted until Sept. 29, 2010, and the winners will be announced in December 2010. Following the Changemakers competition, select entries may be invited to submit proposals to the Amgen Foundation for future funding consideration. The Amgen Foundation will consider awarding up to $1 million in grants to support promising innovations in patient empowerment submitted by qualifying nonprofit organizations.

Amgen held its fourth annual Amgen Scholars US Symposium, hosted by the Amgen Foundation in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on July 17–19. The three-day symposium is part of Amgen Scholars, a $27.5-million initiative of the Amgen Foundation, established in 2006. More than 325 undergraduate students (268 from the US) participated in the program and who had been selected from nearly 4700 applications. The symposium provides mentoring to learn how biotechnology can be applied into their research and future career paths in areas such as drug discovery and development. Details of the Amgen Scholars program can be found here.

The Silberman College of Business at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey is accepting applications for the Fall 2010 Graduate Certificate Programs for Managing Sustainability, which is being offered in conjunction with the business school INCAE of Costa Rica.

The Partnership for Quality Medical Donations (PQMD), a humanitarian alliance of manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment and nonprofit organizations in developing countries, reported that PQMD member organizations have pledged more than $66 million as of the end of June 2010 as part of the relief efforts in Haiti, more than quadrupling the initial pledge of $15.5 million made in January 2010 when the earthquake first struck.

Roche (Basel, Switzerland) is inviting 100 students to participate in Roche Continents study, a workshop aligned with the Salzburg Festival in Salzburg, Austria, to explore the common ground of creativity in the arts, music, and science. Launched in 2007, Roche Continents works with students and young scientists between the ages of 20 and 29.

The US Chamber of Commerce Business Civic Leadership Center (BCLC), an affiliate of the US Chamber of Commerce, FedEx, and InterAction, a US-based alliance of nongovernmental organizations, are working to develop a web-based mapping platform to bring transparency and accountability to the relief efforts in Haiti. The online platform will share critical data about resource allocation, program activities, and unmet needs in Haiti. A prototype currently is being tested and shared with the broader humanitarian community in Haiti, including agencies working on recovery efforts with the Haitian government, InterAction, BCLC, and FedEx. The completed platform is expected by the end of the year. The prototype can be found at http://haitiaidmap.org.

The World Environment Center, a nonprofit sustainability learning initiative, and the Center for Corporate Sustainability Management at IMD, a member-driven research and learning initiative, have formed a joint partnership to assist global companies in implementing sustainable development in their business strategies and operations. The specific objectives of the partnership are to do the following: conduct joint forums and roundtables on select leadership topics; organize training activities to advance learning and competency development in advancing innovation through sustainability management; expand the capacity of both organizations in providing sustainability management services and in identifying emerging issues. IMD is a Swiss-based organization whose members include BASF (Ludwigshafen, Germany) and Novartis (Basel, Switzerland).