Become a catalyst

For Companies

Essential healthcare companies have a vital role to play in achieving global healthcare equity. Through events, tailored advice and multistakeholder dialogue, we challenge and support key industry players to reach more people living in low- and middle-income countries.

Pauline L'Hénaff

Head of Industry Engagement

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Industry has the power to transform global health

As the producers and developers of life-saving medicines and technologies, essential healthcare companies have a duty to help make their products accessible to everyone, regardless of socioeconomic standing. Meanwhile, expanding access to more populations means entering new markets and unlocking new revenue streams.

At the Access to Medicine Foundation, we mobilise essential healthcare companies to improve availability and strengthen supply chains in low- and middle-income countries. Behind the scenes, we are hard at work measuring progress, sharing advice, stimulating dialogue and helping to create the optimal conditions for progress.

CEO, Jayasree K. Iyer, at the FT Global Pharma and Biotech Summit (November 2023, London, UK) Credit: FT Live

How we engage with essential healthcare companies

Over the last two decades, we have developed a robust model for guiding and stimulating essential healthcare companies to do more for people in poorer countries. In collaboration with a range of stakeholders, we build consensus on the role of industry in addressing healthcare inequity, and then analyse what companies are actually doing. Based on our findings, we identify best practices and solutions that companies can take forward.

We engage with companies directly to help turn research insights into real-world action. As an independent and trusted partner in global health, we liaise with senior management to improve buy-in and endorsement of access at the highest level. At the same time, we empower internal access teams to drive change from below: our company engagement team regularly undertakes change-making activities within companies, such as workshops and town hall meetings for hundreds of employees.

Our Amsterdam Sessions provide a unique space for people working with and within essential healthcare companies to come together and discuss access to healthcare products. Through moderated working groups and panel discussions, participants share best practices and explore possible approaches. Armed with insights from these sessions, company access teams can level up their access strategies and internal metrics.

To create the right conditions for companies to make progress on access to medicine, help is needed from many directions. Through our work with governments and global health organisations, we stimulate collaboration between the public and private sectors. We engage with investors to share our analysis and insights, paving the way for constructive interactions with investee companies.

We believe in the value of open dialogue for making change happen. By making all our publications freely and openly available, we are ushering in a new era of transparency and mutual learning between essential healthcare companies regarding access. We aim to bring the public on board, too: with frequent appearances in major media outlets, we strive to increase awareness about what more the industry can do for global health.

Maximum impact through targeted engagement: five key sectors

A diverse range of companies is critical in providing patients with a continuum of care. Our work focuses on five key sectors: R&D-based pharma companies, generic medicines, diagnostics, vaccines and medical oxygen. These are sectors where a relatively small number of companies control the market, whether through dominance of manufacturing and distribution or via innovation and intellectual property rights. Moving these big players is therefore key for improving the scale of access globally.