Price, Cost, Spend: Following Pfizer’s Rabbit

Fifteen years ago, I walked out in protest when a pair of Big Pharma recruiters visited my Community Health Sciences lecture at UCLA. Here we were, examining social determinants of health and assessing public health programs’ impact, and these folks were hawking their slick, updated employee gym and company swag? I didn’t stick around to […]

How Well Do You Know Your Patients, Really?

I recently had the opportunity to present recommendations for a Patient Support Program to a biotech’s executive leadership team. For US patients, the barriers to starting and staying on therapy, even a life-saving one, are most likely to be financial. Just because you have (employer-sponsored) insurance does not mean you will have coverage. You already […]

Luck and Health.

This pile of stones was a two-room house, with a dirt floor, tin roof, no running water, and no electricity. And it was my mother’s childhood home in Barnacranny, Galway, Ireland. My grandmother gave birth to 10 of her 12 children in this house (she delivered the last two in a hospital). Tragically, she was […]