In May, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force lowered the colorectal cancer screening rate from 50 to 45, making 45 million Americans eligible to be checked for the potentially life-threatening disease. Bausch Health’s GI division, Salix Pharmaceuticals, is working with The Colon Cancer Coalition to make sure this messages is heard and acted upon this Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month.
While this is Salix’s second year working on "The Faces of Blue" campaign, The Colon Cancer Coalition has been running the initiative for 11 years. Using real people’s real stories on the a dedicated webpage, the goal is to spur people into speaking with their doctors about scheduling a colonoscopy.
Salix is supporting the campaign and driving traffic to the website with social media partnerships on Twitter and LinkedIn as well as through social influencers; it's also getting the message to HCPs through its sales force.
“We have the opportunity during the month to do different things to stimulate the conversation and create that opportunity to create awareness,” said Nicola Kayel, Salix’s head of marketing.
“We encourage our sales team during the month of March to wear a face mask that has the Faces of Blue campaign logo on it. We also have them wearing blue bracelets— just to create that moment where someone may ask, ‘What's this all about?’ This allows us to get into that conversation of the importance of educating people on the risks of colorectal cancer and, more importantly, really stressing the importance for early screening.”
This comes as a number of pharma companies, including Roche and AstraZeneca in recent months, are also pushing hard to get people back into their doctors' offices to get screened for cancer. Screening rates have dropped in the past two years amid the COVID pandemic, but this can delay diagnosis and, for pharma, treatments getting into patients' hands.
That importance of early screening in colorectal cancer in particular can’t be emphasized enough. Kayel says. The disease is often called “the silent killer,” because it's often symptom-free until there’s a problem. When caught early, treatment and prognosis are good.
Due to the nature of the disease and where it affects patients, colorectal cancer is often not talked about or ignored—unlike other cancers—and it’s that “awareness gap” Kayel hopes Faces of Blue will tap into.
“Our ultimate goal is that we have more customers either talking to their primary care provider or their GI provider about how do they get screened for potential colorectal cancer.”
Salix’s GI business features IBS drug Xifaxan; Trulance, acquired from Synergy Pharmaceuticals and used for chronic idiopathic constipation; Relistor, for opioid-induced constipation; Plenvu, a prescription bowel prep liquid; and investigational compound dolcanatide.