There are five of them - Harvard University, Yale University, Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania and Boston University - will release a pledge to encourage companies to give poor countries better access to drugs and medical products based on discoveries made on their campuses, Bloomberg News reports.

Their promise is supposed to guide how drugs developed by scientists at their universities are licensed to companies, a Harvard spokesman tells Bloomberg, adding that the schools signed their pledge after campus student groups pushed for policies to make new drugs available at low cost to poor patients.

The statement commits the schools to make “vigorous efforts” to promote global access to drugs through licensing strategies, Bloomberg writes. For example, the schools will work to include provisions in licenses that call for lower prices in poor countries. They’ll also use strategies such as decreasing their own royalty rates to persuade companies to cut prices or allow low-cost generic production of new drugs for poor patients, Bloomberg continues.

The move caught at least one drugmaker by surprise. “I’m concerned about this type of action taking place unilaterally for a major source of inventions for the world,” Alnylam Pharmaceuticals chief executive John Maraganore, tells Bloomberg, adding that he wasn’t aware Harvard was involved. “I think it’s very important to have a dialogue to get this right.”

An international student group called Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, supported by the Ford Foundation, has been asking schools to help broaden access to drugs for about seven years. In 2001, the group pushed Yale and Bristol-Myers Squibb to permit generic production of its AIDS drug Zerit in South Africa, so that it can be sold at a lower price, Bloomberg points out. Harvard’s chapter of Essential Medicines held campus demonstrations in favor of increased drug access in September. Supporters erected giant pill bottles on campus and wore “Say Yes to Drugs” T-shirts.

“A number of institutions have been willing to be tough and creative on these issues,” Maryanne Fenerjian, Harvard’s director of technology-transfer policy, tells Bloomberg. “Until now, we haven’t had a statement says this is what we see as our goal, this is what we see as our new norm.”