To brew up the latest iteration of its ongoing initiative to provide deeper education around chronic skin conditions, AbbVie sought help from a onetime teenage witch.
Actor and director Melissa Joan Hart hosted this year’s “Science of Skin” event, which was held Thursday night in New York City and featured discussions among patients, doctors and skin disease advocates. Hart has a personal connection to dermatological conditions, as the caregiver to a son with eczema.
AbbVie launched “The Science of Skin” in 2020. The multiyear initiative is aimed at improving awareness and education around chronic skin diseases for patients and doctors alike—empowering patients to take a more active role in seeking treatment, while also helping dermatologists better understand the impacts of long-term skin conditions on their patients and explore new and improved treatments and support options.
AbbVie is the maker of a broad range of dermatology drugs, including Humira, Rinvoq, Skyrizi and more, with core focus areas of psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, hidradentis suppurativa and psoriatic arthritis.
At Thursday’s event, the “Clarissa Explains It All” star presided over a trio of fireside chats, all organized around the night’s theme: “Empowering Conversations to Take Control of Chronic Skin Disease.”
The first discussion, titled “Redefining Control to Strengthen Patient Outcomes,” featured Elyse Love, M.D., and Ashley Wall, a dermatologist and an eczema patient, respectively. They spoke about ways to improve the relationship between patients and their physicians, with an eye toward steering patients away from “workarounds” that may only temporarily alleviate their symptoms and toward more effective, longer-lasting treatments.
In the second session, a pair of psoriasis patients, Gail Reiser and Roy Pankey, discussed “The Power of Connectivity.” Their conversation highlighted the confidence-boosting benefits that come with building a strong support network made up of understanding and empathetic doctors, advocacy partners and fellow patients.
The night’s final fireside chat starred Chesahna Kindred, M.D., a dermatologist, and Brenda Kong-Tunac, a psoriasis patient. In their session, titled “Amplifying Voices of Skin of Color,” they talked through the unique challenges that face people of color who have chronic skin conditions. Not only do they often face structural barriers in securing a definitive diagnosis and treatment, but the conditions themselves may also present differently in darker skin tones, creating yet another obstacle on the path to effective treatment.
The last of those topics has been a popular one among pharmas as of late: Bristol Myers Squibb launched a campaign last fall debunking myths around the effects of skin conditions on people of color, while Johnson & Johnson and Arcutis Biotherapeutics recently joined in as sponsors of the Skin of Color Society’s video series addressing the impacts of skin diseases on darker skin tones.