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Johnson & Johnson - Index

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distributed in the past five years. The Janssen-Ortho Patient
Assistance Foundation (JOPAF) — a private, independent
foundation — provides pharmaceutical products donated by
the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies, free of charge,
to eligible patients who have no public or private prescription
insurance. Over the past five years, JOPAF has provided free
medicines to nearly one million patients.
We also recently implemented a pharmacy card that
allows patients to obtain their medicine at a retail drug store.
This not only helps patients obtain medicine quickly, but
it also provides enhanced continuity of care for the patients
accessing medicine through our programs.
Q:
How do these Company approaches intersect
with other industry approaches?
SITARIK: Johnson & Johnson played a key leadership role in
the development and implementation of a program called
Partnership for Prescription Assistance (PPA). Launched
nationally in 2004, it is the largest private sector program
in the U.S. to help patients who lack prescription coverage
obtain access to all industry patient assistance programs and
public programs through a single point of entry. Through
the PPA, patients can access more than 475 public and private
patient assistance programs and 1,000 brand and generic
medicines. The PPA has matched almost five million patients
with programs to assist them in accessing medicines.
In addition, our operating companies participate in the
Together Rx Access™ Card, which provides uninsured
people meeting certain eligibility requirements with savings
of 25-40 percent on hundreds of prescription drugs and
products, including most of the prescription drugs made
by our operating companies.
Q:
Denise Sitarik
Vice President
Janssen-Ortho Patient
Assistance Foundation
Who benefits from these programs?
SITARIK: Certainly, patients are the most direct beneficiaries,
but in general, society and family members benefit also.
When people are healthy, they contribute more to society in
general. This enhances the quality of their lives and the lives
of people around them. We find many people are only looking
for temporary assistance, possibly because they’ve lost their
job and can’t afford insurance. It is often short-term support
until they can get back on their feet.
Long-term, when we provide medicine to patients for a
chronic condition, it may prevent having that person show
up in an emergency room at an increased cost of care. Overall,
the program helps to avoid a tremendous burden of costs
in the health care system. If we prevent one hospitalization
by giving a patient free medicine, we eliminate thousands
of dollars for a two-day hospital stay. So, potentially, we’re
helping to keep patients out of hospital charity programs and
giving them both a boost in quality of life and the ability to
contribute more to society, which enhances self-esteem.
It’s a win-win.
Q:
What are your biggest challenges — and how
are you meeting them?
SITARIK: A constant challenge is to manage patient assistance
programs more efficiently, in the best interest of the patient.
This requires that we balance health care provider needs while
managing within the governance of health care compliance,
government and regulatory guidelines. The need to balance
patient privacy with adequate information for the doctors
and pharmacists involved in patient care is imperative. More
recently, we are seeing the development of new state-level
laws that govern the labeling of drugs to protect their integrity
during transport. And we find that many states have vastly
different regulations. We must make sure that the way we
distribute drugs addresses the strictest requirements in place,
so as to expedite the delivery of medicines to patients.
Let’s turn to the international perspective
Q: on access to health care. Julie, what are the
Company’s goals for worldwide access?
MCHUGH: As other companies in this arena have done, we
made the commitment, through our Global Access Program,
to make those HIV medicines that are approved in the U.S.
and Europe accessible and affordable in developing countries
hardest hit by AIDS. Our goals further and center on four
pillars in the response to global infectious disease. In 2007, we
launched a new program — the Tibotec-Virco Partnerships
for Global Health Innovation — that responds to these pillars.
Our first goal focuses on development strategy. We have
compounds in our pipeline, such as a tuberculosis drug candidate,
that could make major contributions to treatment in
developing countries where infectious disease is endemic. We
will apply our development talents to bringing forward compounds
that address these needs, and do it in partnership with
the global public health community so that it’s a no-lose situation.
For example, if we could find a new treatment regimen
that effectively treats or even cures tuberculosis, we would be
able to help impacted nations strengthen both the health of
their citizens and free up the capacity of their public health
systems to tackle other health priorities. This, in turn, enables
them to grow socially and economically more quickly, with
the potential of becoming important future markets.
The second overall goal concerns prevention.We will be
applying our product portfolio, especially our HIV portfolio,
in novel ways to look at prevention strategies as well as treatment.
All antiretroviral drugs brought onto the market today
6 JOHNSON & JOHNSON 2007 SUSTAINABILITY REPORT