Pharma: Pay Attention to Caregivers
As longtime advocates for caregivers, we were pleased to see the recent post from Eye for Pharma, “Pharma’s new ally: the caregiver,” which outlined the many ways that caregivers could work with pharma to meaningfully contribute to the drug development process. While companies such as EMD Serono—widely quoted in the piece—appear to be taking significant steps to integrate the caregiver perspective (and we applaud them for that!), C. Grace Whiting of the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC) points out that “more work needs to be done in the industry as a whole to better understand the role and experiences of caregivers.”
In recent years, Rx4good conducted research on the caregiver’s role in medical decision-making in partnership with 70 organizations from both nonprofit and industry. Our findings highlighted their importance and influence, yet we realized that we have only scratched the surface of understanding the caregiver’s unique role, needs and challenges.
We call on industry to continue efforts to learn more about the caregiver, and to act on their findings to integrate the caregiver perspective along the drug development continuum.
