Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly are reaching out to the nearly 3 million women who suffer from heart failure with a new unbranded educational campaign, “Hear Your Heart.”
The multipronged effort, coming from the sellers of blockbuster diabetes and heart drug Jardiance, addresses some of the points affecting those with heart failure such as diet, exercise and mental health issues. The main hub of the effort is the website positioned as a resource for anyone dealing with heart failure, but specifically women, and even more specifically, Black and Latina women—all of whom suffer a higher mortality rate than their male counterparts.
“I think as women we always tend to put ourselves or put others before ourselves; we deprioritize our own health,” said Anita Holz, MSN, CRNP, Boehringer’s therapeutic area head, cardiometabolism medical affairs. “When you think about Black and Latina women, even more specifically, they often face significant health disparity and inequities in the management of their conditions, especially heart failure. This results in worse outcomes; it results in an even higher mortality for them.”
The phased campaign includes a mix of traditional, paid, social and digital media, live and virtual events, and partnerships. In order to reach the core audience of Black and Latina women, BI is targeting Black and Latina health/wellness outlets in addition to general health and wellness media. There are also plans for the materials on the website to be available in Spanish by the end of the year.
The website features two videos, which, while applicable to all women dealing with heart failure, specifically address the Black and Latina demographics—one which featuring Tannie, a heart failure patient and her view on how consistency on the key to managing heart failure. In the other video, cardiologist Alanna Morris, M.D., offers sage advice on all the components of dealing with the disease successfully from managing multiple medications to ensuring your doctor understands and listens to you.
“We are not stopping at just raising awareness, you need to do more. We also provide educational resources for people living with heart failure,” said Elena Livshina, U.S. head of cardiovascular portfolio, commercial. “We need to be there for those women as a hub to go and seek solutions and find inspirations and hear from people like them. This is just the beginning of the journey, but we are starting there.”
Boehringer and Lilly’s diabetes Jardiance nabbed an additional FDA approval in February to lower the risk of cardiovascular death and hospitalization in adults with heart failure. The drug got its first approval for HFrEF just over a year ago and made $4.3 billion last year.
The crowded heart failure space also includes AstraZeneca’s Farxiga, Novartis’ Entresto and Merck and Bayer’s Verquvo.