Patient Partnership ProgramThrough the Patient Partnership Program, we build strong, mutually beneficial relationships with our patient group partners. How they help us: by sharing the lived experiences of their patient community, helping us to understand the burden of living with a disease, and the successes and challenges they have in improving patients’ lives through their work.How we help them: by offering the vast expertise of our teams to support them with their communication needs, through bespoke training, strategic counsel, or partnering with them on projects. Why do patient groups matter so much to us?Patients are people. People with lives, needs, and values like everyone else, all made harder by living with a health condition. Improving people’s lives in a way that is meaningful to them is the purpose and motivation behind all the work that we do. In a world where life and death decisions are sometimes clouded by jargon and confusion, patient advocates help us to bring science home to our audiences. They are the true experts in their disease, and only with their input can we truly understand its burden. In those crucial moments when time stands still as a health challenge throws us off course, advocacy groups and patients with real world experience of a disease can convey complex science in plain language that people understand. They can help us to make science meaningful for everyday audiences – bringing both insight and an authenticity to health conversations that help us inspire, inform and influence. They are fundamental to our world and our work. By learning from patients, our work is better: more authentic, more empathetic, more meaningful. Our Patient Partnership Program allows our teams to work alongside advocacy groups to put patients at the heart of everything we do. Through this program, we have strong, mutually beneficial relationships with our patient group partners: they share their lived experiences with us and provide invaluable insight into how they are working to improve patients’ lives, and in return, we share our vast expertise to support them with their communication needs. Here’s why. Differences matterWhilst it’s accepted that therapeutic environments are very different, it’s so important to understand how they are different and what these differences mean to patients and physicians....Read MoreConnected with patientsInsight from our patient research and partnerships ensures our ideas and services connect to the real world. Making lives betterOur Patient Partnership Program allows us to understand the patient journey at a granular and tangible level. This enables us to uncover potential inefficiencies and barriers and identify best practices and cost savings. Market accessFirst-hand input from patients and carers helps ensure our value messaging aligns with the issues that Health Technology Assessment (HTA) bodies care about – like quality of life and compliance. Insights from patients and physicians help guide patient-reported outcomes selection and real world evidence development. The patient voice is fast becoming a mandate for changePatient engagement is invaluable at all stages of drug development. Health Technology Assessments are increasingly mandating that manufacturers include the patient voice in submissions. It is routinely provided as an integral part of the key documentation by many manufacturers. Our experience with patients enables us to advise clients on productive and compliant engagement with patients and patient groups. Making a difference makes work meaningfulWe’re passionate about partnering with patients – it helps makes our work meaningful. Our Patient Partnership Program is growing every week. In addition, we also dedicate one day each year to physically supporting the causes we care about. On 29th September every year, we close all our offices and go out into the community to work with directly with patient groups. It’s the largest patient outreach day of its kind in the world. Check out our video – and please get in touch if you want to get involved....Read More Partnering with Patients. Uniting for Health.The VMLY&R Foundation celebrates charitable causes that are important to us. On one very special day every year – VMLY&R Worldwide Foundation Day – we close our doors to normal business and go out together to help those causes in meaningful ways. 12,000 employees from more than 80 cities across six continents unite to support local communities through volunteer projects in a remarkable 24-hour period. We’re uniting for good.To reflect our shared passion for helping patients, in 2021 VMLY&R HEALTH hosted our first Patient Foundation Day – the world’s biggest patient outreach project. Together, VMLY&R HEALTH teams all over the world got out into their communities, rolled up their sleeves and give much-needed support to the patient groups they care about. Whether this meant sharing our comms expertise, inspiring and creating great creative ideas or raising money support local children’s hospitals, VMLY&R HEALTH’S Patient Foundation Day is about unleashing the power of patients. It’s about getting out, giving back and making a difference. And it’s all part of our mission to upskill patient advocacy, give patients a voice and spark the connections that lead to better health. Because we’re all patients – and we’re better connected....Read More