The Amgen Foundation is supporting an online competition with Ashoka's Changemakers to find the best solutions that elevate patients' voices to improve health outcomes globally.

The Patients| Choices| Empowerment competition is seeking solutions that tap the medical experience, knowledge, and wisdom of current and past patients, health care practitioners, advocates and other key stakeholders to ensure that patients have an active role in their personal health care. The ideal solutions are those that empower the patient and provide avenues for informed decisions.

"With health care a key concern around the globe, the Amgen Foundation hopes the competition will surface solutions that can give patients the knowledge and confidence to participate collaboratively at every stage of their health care," said Jean J. Lim, president of the Amgen Foundation.

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 each be awarded US$10,000. Entries will be accepted until September 29, 2010 and the winners will be announced in December 2010.

"We look forward to seeing the global Changemakers community, including Ashoka's network of social entrepreneurs, collaborate to build a worldwide network of support for patients so they experience better health outcomes," said Sushmita Ghosh, founder and chair of Ashoka's Changemakers. "This competition will encourage participants to innovate and collaborate, form partnerships, and build a movement that empowers patients."

Following the Changemakers competition, selected entries may be invited to submit proposals to the Amgen Foundation for future funding consideration. The Amgen Foundation will consider awarding up to US$1 million in grants to support promising innovations in patient empowerment submitted by qualifying nonprofit organizations.

About Ashoka's Changemakers

Ashoka's Changemakers is a community of action that connects social entrepreneurs around the globe to share ideas, inspire, and mentor each other. Through its online collaborative competitions and open-source process, Changemakers.com is one of the world's most robust spaces for launching, discussing, and funding ideas to solve the world's most pressing social problems. Changemakers builds on Ashoka's three decade history and belief that we all have the ability to be a Changemaker. www.Changemakers.com

About The Amgen Foundation

The Amgen Foundation (http://www.amgen.com/citizenship/overview.html) seeks to advance science education; improve patient access to quality care; and strengthen the communities where Amgen staff members live and work. Since 1991, the Foundation has made more than $140 million in grants to nonprofit organizations throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and Europe that impact society in inspiring and innovative ways, and those that provide disaster relief efforts both domestically and internationally.

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public

Ashoka is the global association of the world's leading social entrepreneurs - men and women with system changing solutions for the world's most urgent social problems. Since 1981, Ashoka has elected over 3000 leading social entrepreneurs as Ashoka Fellows, providing them with living stipends, professional support, and access to a global network of peers in more than 70 countries. Working with these social entrepreneurs, Ashoka builds communities of innovators who work collectively to transform society and design new ways for the citizen sector to become more productive, entrepreneurial and globally integrated. For more information, please visit www.ashoka.org.

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