Disease awareness
Many will wonder how creating awareness of the diseases and conditions our products treat is considered an area of Responsibility. But as leaders in the areas in which we operate, we have important knowledge about these difficult and life-altering conditions. We also know from our ongoing work with our many stakeholders, that they too consider it our Responsibility to ensure that this knowledge is shared.
As many of these conditions are often rare, or misunderstood, we feel it is the right thing to do to share our expertise and provide balanced, reliable and scientifically sound information to help improve understanding among patients, their families and caregivers, medical professionals, as well as payors and policymakers.
While helping understanding is of primary importance, equally important is how we undertake this work. We strive to facilitate understanding around these conditions and to share our knowledge and experience with physicians, patients, payors and policymakers. Equally, we’re very conscious that we must share our knowledge responsibly. We do not seek (and do not want to be perceived as seeking) to influence any debate towards outcomes that might be seen as promoting our own medicines. We assist with education in a variety of ways such as sponsoring new research, and conducting educational work with doctors, patient organizations, carers and policymakers.
As we look to 2013, we will continue to strive on behalf of patients to help raise awareness and understanding of the diseases that our medicines treat. We will also undertake a dialogue with key stakeholders with the aim of devising our own set of guidelines for ‘responsible disease awareness’ that will set a high standard for all our disease awareness work globally.
To learn more about what we are doing in each of these areas, please select section on the left hand menu.
“Our teams are working to educate stakeholders and create awareness of little understood or misunderstood conditions, amplifying these efforts to the benefit of current and future patients.”
Brooke Clarke
Sponsor of Disease Awareness,
Senior Director, Global Corporate Communications
Rare Disease Index Report
After decades of investment and research, it’s encouraging to see the immense progress that’s been made in understanding and treating rare diseases. But here’s a fundamental truth: there’s still an urgent need to fully grasp the unique set of challenges facing patients, their families and the medical professionals involved when it comes to rare diseases.
