I am so proud and humbled to celebrate Evolution Road’s 20^th Anniversary this month.  Not many small businesses make it this far, especially those that have faced 9/11, the Great Recession and now the Pandemic.

The sense of heartbreak and loss we all face today was unimaginable a few short weeks ago.  Yet the strength of our global community is far stronger than this pandemic.  People across the world have risen to its challenge.  People in every one of our neighborhoods goes to work on the front lines of healthcare every day to stand and face this challenge and help people in desperate need.  While we have a ways to go, I know we will all stand strong and stand together, and we will make it through.

I had hoped to celebrate this milestone in ER’s history with a great party, but my sense of what matters has changed.  I now celebrate that my family, friends, Evolution Road colleagues and clients are still safe for the most part.  I now celebrate that our empty nest at home isn’t so empty anymore and that I’ve had the amazing opportunity to spend so much quality time with my two college-aged kids (of course they may not see it the same way 😉).  I celebrate when I see a friend passing by walking their dog and we get the chance to say hi and catch up.  I celebrate the opportunity to get a bagel at our local bagel store (observing all appropriate social distancing protocols of course) and paying 10x for my bagel so they can give the extra $ to their employees who are struggling to make ends meet. 

I now celebrate the important big things, and the important little things that are so much more important to me now than they were 6 weeks ago.  Certainly not what I expected, but grateful nonetheless.

The social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age.¹ You’ve probably seen or read the term in headlines, presented at conferences, or discussed at roundtables and meeting, but how are social determinants of health (SDoH) relevant to pharma?

Sachin Jain MD, MBA, Former CMIO of Merck explains it this way, “Every brand needs to take a precision approach to addressing social determinants, biopharma has a huge opportunity and imperative. You can produce medicines that will change lives, but if you don’t have the living conditions to support effective use of those medicines, we’re missing an opportunity to improve human health.”

Determinants, or drivers of health, are not a novel concept, yet there has been explosion of interest across the healthcare value chain. In fact, the “aha” moment was when healthcare stakeholders realized that in order to achieve optimal health outcomes AND value for healthcare services, determinants need to be addressed. 

Why?

In the shift from volume to value, understanding the complexity of patients’ lives is re-shaping drug development and commercialization. Only by analyzing data collected in routine medical care, and eventually from patients’ day-to-day lives, can pharma align with providers, payers, and regulators to design digital or traditional therapeutic interventions that will not fail in the face of complex real life.²

Studies show that there are correlations to how patients live their lives and how effective drugs are. Coupling this with arguably one of the most important determinants, health literacy, pharma has an incentive and an opportunity to address SDoH in a variety of ways. Patients from traditionally disadvantaged social groups, limited education, or income levels have struggled with medication management. Rarely does a patient not want to be healthy, yet there are other obstacles keeping them from medication adherence.³ Patients don’t wake up in the morning and think “I’m not going to follow what my doctor told me to do today.”

There are a variety of societal challenges that keep patients from taking their medications such as high out of pocket costs, mobility, inability to get to the pharmacy, limited educational attainment, and health literacy. Pharma can work with local communities to promote health by offering free transportation to and from pharmacies and doctor appointments, or working with health systems to improve health literacy in underserved communities. Prescriptions, at times, can be too difficult to access due to lack of insurance coverage, and although pharma offers substantial patient support programs, there is still systematic policy issues around coinsurance and who pays for the healthcare services and drugs used. 

Social determinants such as food insecurity, transportation, job training, education, housing, and health literacy can impact clinical outcomes substantially. So who’s responsibility is it anyway to address these determinants? Well as lines of responsibility become blurred in today’s healthcare consumer-centric era, stakeholders need to work together, and take responsibility for the patient.  Going beyond the pill to bundle drugs with lightweight services, whether it’s a screening, a referral or some financial assistance, are some ways pharma can address social determinants of health.

Of the determinants listed previously, many are the underlying symptoms that can lead to low rates of medication adherence. Medication adherence is and always has been a significant issue for pharma, and employing digital technologies such as apps and smart pill bottles are helping to solve this complex puzzle . Only by going a layer deeper, by learning about the true needs of the patients they are serving, will pharma truly solve this issue and improve outcomes. 

¹https://www.who.int/social_determinants/sdh_definition/en/

²https://www.aetion.com/post/addressing-the-determinants-of-health-what-is-pharmas-role

³ https://patientengagementhit.com/features/using-social-determinants-of-health-to-drive-medication-adherence

⁴ https://www.mmm-online.com/home/channel/features/why-every-drug-should-have-a-social-care-strategy-but-most-dont/

PM360 asked the industry’s brightest which new technologies are having the most impact on marketers and how they need to adjust. ER’s own Brandi Ascione shared her perspective.