Envisioning 2.0

Healthcare communicators and others have long urged pharmaceutical companies and non-profits to forge partnerships in order to educate the public and improve health. Clearly, these cause alliances have been very successful for all involved, which is why they remain popular.

Today however, the landscape is changing. As already reported on several blogs, including Pharmalot, new research from my firm, Envision Solutions, indicates that the public is skeptical of the pharmaceutical industry’s motives for supporting non-profits. According to a national survey commissioned by Envision Solutions, 43% of US adults believe that pharmaceutical companies fund groups like the American Heart Association and the National Kidney Foundation in order to get more people to buy their products or medicines.

This suspicion, coupled with increasingly negative media coverage of these alliances cries out for action on the part of communicators and non-profit/pharmaceutical executives. The first step is recognizing that we have a problem. The second is taking appropriate steps to ensure the public understands how these partnerships are structured and why they are independent and valuable. If we don’t take action, we face the prospect of increased government regulation and other unpleasant consequences.

A new report available for purchase on my firm’s Website, “Preserving the Power of Pharma-Non-Profit Partnerships,” outlines the problem and illustrates one way we can move forward. Click here to learn more about it.

This entry was posted on April 23, 2007 at 11:19 am and is filed under Marketing Communications, The Pharmaceutical Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.