Gilead Sciences is taking a step into the wellness space to support patients with chronic diseases by offering resources that go beyond physical health. The company is partnering with mindfulness app Calm to provide curated content for those impacted by cancer, HIV and liver conditions.
More than one-third of people living with HIV in the U.S. experience depression, while 28% have an anxiety disorder, according to Gilead and Calm. Additionally, those with HIV often struggle with stigma that can stir up feelings of shame and anxiety.
Meanwhile, about 50% of people with cancer experience distress, with some two in ten people with cancer reporting symptoms of depression. For those with liver conditions such as primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), symptoms such as fatigue, chronic itch and brain fog can take a toll on daily life, Gilead points out.
Ahead of World Mental Health Day on Oct. 10, the company is rolling out disease-specific content on the Calm app and online. The resources include calming meditation and soundscape sessions, which could help those with an advanced cancer diagnosis, for example, "ease moments of distress" and "move to a more empowered state," according to the oncology-specific mindfulness tools page from Calm, Gilead and Kite Oncology. Caregivers or people otherwise impacted by the disease are also encouraged to use the free tools.
The new partnership falls under Gilead’s “commitment to the whole person,” the company’s V.P. of U.S. public affairs Darius Kuras told Fierce in an interview. The drugmaker’s plethora of medicines for the conditions the program focuses on “only go so far” to help on a whole-person level, especially when it comes to mental health.
“The idea of marrying the science and the medicine with the support around stress, anxiety, fatigue, particularly for those conditions that we work in—in HIV, in oncology, liver disease—it really made a lot of sense,” Kuras explained.
To develop the content, Gilead worked with patient and patient groups directly to see what kind of support they might need that goes “beyond the medicine,” he said. By leveraging Calm’s global reach of millions of users to deploy helpful mental health resources, visibility around the “quieter issue” can be brought to the forefront, Kuras explained.
The Calm partnership will extend for two years and could continue to expand as Gilead hones in on its commitment to holistic health. At Gilead, providing resources that “see beyond the physical health” has always been “top of mind,” the V.P. notes.
Calm made its foray into the biopharma world earlier this year through a collaboration with medtech company Insulet, rolling out a suite of mindfulness tools tailored to the diabetes community. The relaxation app launched in 2012 and has since evolved from a “meditation app into a mental health app,” Chris Mosunic, Ph.D., who serves as chief clinical officer at Calm’s clinical healthcare offshoot Calm Health, explained in an interview earlier this summer.
In 2023, Calm began tinkering with disease-specific community programming with a Mayo Clinic partnership, offering digital mental health programs to guide cancer patients through anxiety and depression care. Mosunic cited the Insulet collab as a first in the pharma world, however, as an example of a company “leaning into that mental health aspects in a really big way,” he said. “That’s really going to close the gap.”