Despite falling business interest in environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies and outright opposition to such sustainability and ethics commitments in the U.S., company ESG practices still matter to patient groups’ perceptions of Big Pharma.
That’s according to a new report published Friday by PatientView, which surveyed 701 patient groups last fall about their views on corporate ESG at 15 major drugmakers.
When asked about each segment of ESG, almost all of the surveyed groups, 94%, said that the impact a pharma has on society is important to them. The “G” came in second place, with 88% saying a company’s standards of corporate governance are important to their organization, while 67% said the same about drugmakers’ environmental impact.
And those practices play a part in the groups’ decisions to work with certain pharmas. Just over 80% said they “sometimes” or “always” consider companies’ efforts to address social issues when deciding to form a partnership. Nearly three-quarters said the same about corporate governance work, and 58% said they take a company’s efforts to protect the environment into account.
PatientView also asked the groups to assess 15 pharmas based on eight ESG-related criteria, including how well they communicate their ESG activities, address health inequities with those activities and report their progress on reaching stated ESG goals.
With those indicators in mind, when asked to rank the companies they’re familiar with, patient groups labeled Roche as “best” at ESG, followed by Gilead Sciences and Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine. The ranking was similar among companies with which the patient groups have directly worked: Gilead took first place there, followed by Roche and AstraZeneca.
As for how pharmas can further improve patient group perceptions of their ESG practices, top suggestions from the surveyed groups included demonstrating “practical action” and being clearer and more targeted in their communication. Many of the groups said they’re also seeking stronger relationships with pharmas specifically over their shared ESG goals.
The report suggests that pharmas’ ESG policies still play an important role in their public perceptions, as evidenced not only by the survey results, but also by the more than 700 groups that voluntarily chose to participate in the first place, as PatientView noted.
Still, on a broader scale, support for ESG practices is largely in flux. A recent GlobalData survey found that only 8% of people believe ESG will have a significant impact on their business within the next year, down from 20% in early 2022. And, overall, many people seem to believe ESG commitments are “mere marketing,” with only 4% of respondents saying they think most businesses are actually committed to ESG—down from 8% a year earlier.
ESG faces particularly strong opposition in the U.S., where it’s become a partisan issue in the same vein as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices—which largely fall under the “S” of ESG. As of last summer, per Bloomberg, 20 states had passed anti-ESG laws, and many more such bills have been proposed at both the state and federal levels.
Indeed, according to PatientView, fewer U.S. groups chose to respond to this survey compared to its other pharma-focused questionnaires, in a likely nod to the increasingly controversial nature of ESG practices in the U.S.