One of the most expensive problems facing the healthcare industry is drug shortages. They cost US hospitals roughly $900 million and 20 million hours of labor annually, according to a June 2025 survey from healthcare services firm Vizient.
A Florida-based nonprofit, Angels for Change, is trying to solve that problem.
Laura Bray, a former business professor, founded the organization in 2019 after being told that a life-saving medicine her young daughter undergoing cancer treatment needed was unavailable. Though she was eventually able to get it, Bray made it her goal to help prevent other families from going through a similar scenario.
“Our mission is to end drug shortages through advocacy, awareness, and a resilient supply chain,” Bray told Healthcare Brew. “Nobody was prioritizing it because of lack of awareness, and nobody was providing solutions like they were in every other supply chain, so we have to build that solution.”
In April, the Government Accountability Office released a report stating drug shortages are “a serious public health problem” and recommended the Department of Health and Human Services collaborate with other federal agencies to mitigate the issue.
Angels for Change is funded by various grassroots efforts, including an annual gala, grants, and donations, as well as partnerships with healthcare companies including Pfizer, Fresenius Kabi, and McKesson.
Angels for Change comprises four employees, including Bray, plus volunteers. Since 2022, the nonprofit has worked on more than 100 drug shortages—including for insulin, growth hormone, and the chemotherapy drug carboplatin—and has helped patients access more than 750,000 medicines, according to the organization’s 2024 impact report.
How it works
Angels for Change operates a “drug shortage hotline,” which anyone can contact for assistance navigating shortages.
The nonprofit typically hears from about 10 patients per week, Bray said, though it varies. For instance, in late 2024 when Hurricane Helene wiped out a Baxter manufacturing plant that made IV fluids and caused a nationwide shortage, Angels for Change received 60 to 100 calls every day at that time, Bray said, adding that they respond to everyone.
By the time a patient calls, Bray is usually already aware of the shortage, she said. But “if they’re the first one to notify me, the very first thing I do is I tell them that they deserve better, and I also validate that this is real,” she added.
Angels for Change
Sometimes the process of getting a patient connected to their medication takes just minutes while others can take hours, Bray said. When a shortage is more complex, she spends time educating the patient on the circumstances of the shortage and gives them steps they can take to ensure they’re still getting treatment.
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For instance, sometimes only one dosage or formulation of a drug is in short supply, so Bray advises the patient to ask their doctor if they can switch to an available option.
“There might be a shortage, but that doesn’t mean there’s an outage, and that is a big difference,” she said. “I’m showing them where they can find real-time, government-approved data that they can share with their physicians and pharmacists to advocate for themselves.”
The nonprofit has been successful at getting patients back on treatment 98% of the time, according to Bray.
Getting ahead of shortages
In addition to helping patients access medicines already in low supply, Angels for Change tries to prevent shortages from happening in the first place.
Marta Wosińska, a senior fellow in economic studies at Brookings Center on Health Policy, told Healthcare Brew that much of the work Angels for Change does centers on building buffer inventory of critical medicines in case a supply chain disruption occurs and setting up systems to allocate medicines to patients who need them most.
“I think that’s a niche place that Laura has been very effective in getting industry to collaborate on,” Wosińska said.
Hospitals reach out to Angels for Change to alert them of a supply disruption, and the organization works with various stakeholders to try to mitigate the problem before a shortage reaches patients, according to Bray. The nonprofit works on about three disruptions in an average week, she said.
Angels for Change also runs two programs, called Project Protect and Project GOLD (Generic Oncology Lifesaving Drugs), focused on tackling some of the biggest challenges in the drug supply chain.
Project Protect provides grants to US-based manufacturers to help them build flexible capacities related to drugs vulnerable to shortage, according to Bray. That way, when a shortage does happen, the manufacturer can start producing those drugs onshore and get them to hospitals, she said. The organization has so far given out 13 such grants totaling $434,599.
Project GOLD works with manufacturers to create buffer stock of medicines. So far, three drug companies (Cencora, McKesson, and Fresenius Kabi) have created additional supplies of six oncology drugs via the project, according to Bray, who said she hopes this kind of proactive work will put her drug shortage hotline “out of business.”
“One of the six [oncology drugs] has gone short, and so far there’s been zero interruptions during this shortage and zero patient impact because we were able to engage, and we had additional time and flexibility for that medicine,” she said.