Disease Awareness Program Excellence: Utilizing Advocacy Groups and Social Media

STUDY OVERVIEW

The pharmaceutical industry uses disease state awareness campaigns to disseminate unbranded information about current trends for specific disease states to key external stakeholders.

Pharma companies often work with patient advocacy groups to inform consumers about current disease state trends and clinical programs that are in progress. Unbranded disease state Web sites are one of the principal ways that advocacy groups and pharma companies work together to provide disease awareness information.

Best Practices, LLC conducted a primary research study that examines what type of disease awareness activities companies perform with advocacy groups, when they start those activities, and which do they consider most important. The study also looks at the use of social media for disease awareness activities.


KEY TOPICS

• Involvement of Advocacy and Legal
• Social Media

• From a Disease Awareness program perspective, rate the importance of the following activities related to patient advocacy groups
• Which approaches work best to support Disease Awareness activities with Patient Advocacy groups
• Indicate when you first use these Disease Awareness activities
• What level of involvement does your organization's legal department take in these Disease Awareness program areas
• When do you first use these Disease Awareness activities on social media
• Indicate your three most heavily used social media activities
• What was your total investment in social media Disease Awareness last fiscal year
• Percentage that social media represents of total Disease Awareness budget

• Patient Advocacy Groups Seen as Valuable Partners: Almost 80% of study participants think it is highly important to create alliances with patient advocacy groups. At the same time, a majority also felt it is highly important to build relationships with key advocates and work on disease awareness websites/campaigns for/with advocacy groups.
  
• Supporting Activities via Advocacy Groups: Participants said the best approach for supporting disease awareness activities with patient advocacy groups were sponsoring disease state awareness events and supporting education programs.

• Sixteen leaders at 16 leading pharmaceutical and biotech organizations participated in this study. In addition, one global communications firm representing a biopharma client also participated.

Industries Profiled:
Pharmaceutical; Manufacturing; Biotech; Consumer Products; Diagnostic; Medical Device; Public Relations; Health Care; Biopharmaceutical


Companies Profiled:
Bayer; Abbvie; Genzyme; Adamas Pharmaceuticals; AstraZeneca; Biogen; Novartis; Eli Lilly; FleishmanHillard; Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co. KGaA; ZS Pharma; Indivior; Merck; Catalyst Pharmaceuticals; Prometheus Therapeutics & Diagnostics; Tokai Pharmaceuticals; Vertex Pharmaceuticals

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