Best practice: 2022 Access to Medicine Index

Promoting and rewarding the effective delivery of access initiatives at top levels

When responsibility for access strategies lies directly with a company’s board of directors, this helps to ensure top-level accountability for access, prioritisation of goals and keeping targets on track. GSK, Novartis, Pfizer and Takeda remain leaders in this area, as in the previous Index, and they are now joined by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. All six companies maintain access as a pillar of their business operations, make board-level committees responsible for access strategies and deploy financial and non-financial short- and long-term incentives, for the CEO, relevant senior executives, and in-country and regional management. The companies also disclose how access aligns with overall strategy.

Companies

AstraZeneca, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Pfizer, Takeda

Location

Global

Focus

n/a

Action

Incentivising top-level managers with financial and non-financial rewards to achieve access targets and objectives, establishing senior-level responsibility

Aim

To reinforce governance of access through incentive structures

GSK announced in 2021 that of its six new Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) focal areas, two will be access/global health and health security. As part of the assessment for achieving operational business objectives, GSK uses area-specific metrics to measure success in delivery for all executive directors. GSK plans to increase accountability through a leadership bonus plan that considers the achievement of strategic/operational business objectives per area.

Takeda has developed a corporate philosophy dashboard to outline access KPIs for its Executive Team. For senior executives and in-country managers in two units (growth and emerging markets), it uses financial and non-financial incentives to promote access strategies. It also reports that it has increased the weighting for access-related incentives for senior managers and country managers from five to 10 percent and has formed an Access Excellence Committee to monitor and evaluate access planning and metrics in accordance with Takeda’s Access Framework.

Pfizer continues to commit to holding leadership accountable for societal and environmental impact. Having examined how best to link compensation with ESG performance, Pfizer’s compensation committee adopted the ESG scorecard, which took effect in 2022. The company says this will help determine funding for its annual short-term incentive plan and strengthen its commitment to ESG initiatives. Globally, implementation of the scorecard will cover approximately 30,000 staff, including senior leaders.

Novartis continues to perform well in this area through embedding its Access Principles (APs) into governance structures. Its five-year roadmap for ESG strategy and activities includes key priorities to accelerate AP commitments. A performance management process applied worldwide and with short- and long-term incentives helps to foster a high-performance culture. Targets align with ESG strategic priorities including access, and mid- to long-term targets include implementing access strategies for all new medicines, tiered pricing for launches in pharmaceuticals and oncology business units, and reduction of the time lag between launches in high- and lower-income countries.

AstraZeneca’s Access to Healthcare strategy sets goals for equitable access, affordability and pricing and health system resilience, and uses financial and non-financial rewards to incentivise the CEO, some senior executives and in-country/regional managers to achieve these goals.

Johnson & Johnson’s overarching business strategy includes an access-to-medicine strategy embedded in its global public health (GPH) unit. Access and GPH are strategic priorities and executive committee members (including the CEO) are evaluated for performance on these. Its Health for Humanity Goals 2025 provide KPIs with outcomes rewarded via short- and long-term incentives for senior management. The company also incentivises leaders to achieve access goals through award programmes, continued learning, rotational development programmes, secondments, employee engagement and empowerment programmes and volunteering opportunities.