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Corporate Responsibility Report 2008

Partnering to combat chronic diseases

Healthcare costs in many countries are a concern for patients, healthcare payers and the pharmaceutical industry alike. The increase in prevalence of many chronic diseases such as asthma, diabetes and heart disease is a major contributing factor.

We are working with governments and employers to find new ways to address the problem of chronic diseases while reducing healthcare costs. Our approach, known as the ‘triple solution’, has three focus areas:

• Prevention – addressing the causes of chronic diseases, such as obesity and smoking, poor diet and lack of exercise
• Intervention – properly managing chronic diseases to prevent complications, avoid hospitalisation costs and reduce time away from work
• Innovation – developing new treatments for costly unmet medical needs such as Alzheimer’s disease and stroke

Working with employers and communities

In the US, healthcare is a major source of expenditure for the government, employers and consumers. In 2006, expenditures in the US on healthcare exceeded $2 trillion.

Additionally, absence from work due to ill health can be a significant cost that often goes unrecognised. We work closely with state and local public health agencies and a large number of employers across the US to help them create health management programmes that remove barriers to healthcare access, reduce healthcare costs and improve health.

Our organisation has worked with more than ten states, five municipalities and 200 employers to:

• Help address some of the diseases that put a great burden on healthcare budgets
• Encourage employers to provide preventative services to workers, for example, regular health screening to detect early signs of disease, awareness campaigns and initiatives to help employees adopt a healthy lifestyle.
• Develop disease management programmes which help employees control their symptoms and stick to their treatment regimens
• Initiate comprehensive wellness initiatives for obesity and smoking, for which we have leading products. Smoking is the leading cause of death and disease in the United States. The direct and indirect costs associated with being overweight and obese are estimated to exceed $100 billion per year in the US, approximately nine per cent of annual medical expenditures.

We may advise employers to create new incentives for better health management, for example by reducing the co-pay element of prescription medicine charges. This can increase the total amount employers pay for pharmaceuticals in the short term. However, by improving patient medication adherence rates, it can prevent costly complications and time away from work in the longer term, and so help to lower overall healthcare costs.

The Diabetes Ten City Challenge

Each day in the US, diabetes causes an estimated 225 lower limb amputations and up to 66 people to lose their sight. However, with the right treatment many of these complications can be prevented.

The Diabetes Ten City Challenge, supported by GSK, is a partnership of city governments and private employers in ten cities, the American Pharmacist Association (APhA) Foundation and pharmacists. It helps employees with diabetes manage their condition through nutrition and medication and by adopting a healthy lifestyle. It aims to prevent serious side-effects and reduce associated healthcare costs.

Key features include:

• Lower co-pays (the portion of prescription costs paid for by the patient), making medicines more affordable and making it more likely that patients will adhere to their prescribed treatment regimen
• Regular meetings between patients and pharmacists to discuss symptoms and identify any potential complications as early as possible
• Help for participants to set and achieve nutrition, exercise and weight loss goals, including printed materials and meetings with pharmacist coaches

We share the Challenge’s findings and resources with other employers outside the ten cities through a dedicated website.

The programme is based on the APhA Foundation’s Asheville Project, which helped reduce healthcare costs for participating employees by over 34 per cent and cut absenteeism by 50 per cent on average. A pilot project based on the Asheville Project has now been launched in Japan. Run by a team from Showa University, the pilot will involve 100 diabetes and asthma patients over a two-year period.

Community health centres

In 2008 we donated over $130,000 to the St Cecilia’s health centre in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, a part of the city which saw great devastation during Hurricane Katrina. The money has been used to fund the clinic’s Community Diabetes Outreach Program, which has helped it to exceed the US national average for the percentage of diabetics receiving regular tests and controlling their symptoms.

Read more about our efforts to raise awareness and prevent disease.

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