Sponsored Insight
Addressing health equity is essential to providing outstanding patient-focused care. Novartis US EVP and Chief Commercial Officer Reshema Kemps-Polanco does this by “putting the patient in the room.” When her commercial team and the R&D team collaborate, the focus is on both the discovery of breakthrough medicines and the lived experiences of the patients who can benefit from these drugs.
At the 2024 STAT Breakthrough Summit East (BTE) event in NYC, Reshema shared her vision and personal commitment to prioritizing patient care, starting with the early research stage to product development to the eventual commercialization of new medicines. “90% of our early research programs were built with patient input,” she explained during a Multimedia Lounge interview with STAT Brand Studio.
Reshema’s passion for putting the patient in the room stems from her own experience of devastating loss. Dinisa, her college roommate, godmother to her children, and best friend of 30 years, lost her life to metastatic breast cancer at only 48 years old.
“She and I were just a day apart in age. I always said if I had a twin, she would have been it.”
Reshema recognizes now how little she and her friend understood about Dinisa’s prognosis: “She didn’t really understand the risk of recurrence. She had been disease-free for about 7 years and really felt that she was cured. There was quite a shock when we found out that the cancer was back and it was metastatic. At that point, you’re out of the curative phase.”
Dinisa was a fighter to the end despite her grim prognosis. Reshema keeps a picture of Dinisa in her office to remind her of her friend’s fearlessness. She also channels the spirit of over 40 other family members and friends she knows who’ve been affected by life-threatening diseases that Novartis works to treat.
A culture of patient obsession — eliminating barriers to care
Witnessing Dinisa’s battle with cancer had a lasting impact on Reshema and her approach to her work. She strives for a culture of patient obsession at Novartis, one that ensures that patients are included, well-informed, and have the best access to care.
As a focused-medicine company, Novartis aims to have a greater impact on patient care by developing deeper expertise in key therapeutic areas. Before research has even begun, the team at Novartis studies which patient demographics have the worst disease outcomes so they can allocate resources accordingly. For example, in the US there are certain communities and populations disproportionally affected by prostate cancer, breast cancer, and cardiovascular disease, and these patients tend to have poorer outcomes as well.
Hearing from patients directly about their lived experiences at all stages of development is critical to shaping the design of clinical trials and Novartis’ strategy, and ultimately eliminating those disparities.
An approach Reshema feels strongly about is taking clinical trials to patients. “If the patients have to face too many barriers in accessing medicines, then we’re not doing our job,” Reshema explains.
New drugs may be safe and efficacious, but many patients living in remote or underserved areas lack access to these drugs if they don’t live near an academic medical center. Even if they do have access, other factors such as food insecurity, lack of social support at home, a complex and fragmented health care system, and conscious and unconscious bias can serve as additional non-clinical barriers to care. Most importantly, patients need and deserve a team of culturally sensitive medical providers whom they trust in order to ensure the best outcomes.
“We try to understand it in a holistic fashion as we build out target product profiles,” Reshema says. “What’s it going to take to bring that medicine to bear equitably and at scale?”
Beacon of Hope
In this vein, Novartis’ US-based Beacon of Hope initiative employs a holistic approach to achieving health equity by addressing non-clinical barriers to care. The industry-leading, multi-year partnership joins Novartis with over 26 historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and four medical schools to increase diversity among clinical trial participants and investigators.
The goal of Beacon of Hope is to combat the systemic racism that has led to disparity in access to health care and education. “The first (step) is to develop new centers of excellence for conducting clinical trials right in patients’ backyards in the communities and centers that they know and trust,” Reshema explains. Additionally, the project aims to financially support the next generation of scientists and clinicians, while also providing a mentorship program for students in the life sciences. Reshema is excited to be mentoring four students herself.
The empty chair
But Reshema and the teams at Novartis aren’t stopping there. They recently made a public pledge to improve access to medicine, maintain a high degree of respect for patients and their caregivers, and conduct clinical trials responsibly and with transparency.
“At Novartis, we’ve reached over 30 million patients with our expanded access programs around the world.” From a transparency perspective, Reshema notes that “197 of our clinical trials in 2023 included patient-reported outcomes. We’ve shared over 250 simplified clinical trial summaries with 40,000 participants.” These summaries explain the trials to patients in lay language that’s easy to understand.
With a strong culture of patient obsession, the focus is on not just helping patients survive but also thrive. “Walk in the shoes of the patient,” Reshema reminds her team.
Christy Siegel, VP and TA Head, Immunology US at Novartis inspired Reshema with her unique take on putting the patient in the room: she leaves an empty chair at every team meeting out of respect for the individuals they’re serving. Reshema notes that this ritual wasn’t mandated, but rather, developed organically: “It’s a proof point that (patient obsession) is in the DNA of the people who work here.”
Reshema asks, “If the patient’s watching, what decisions will we make? What would be our sense of urgency? How would we do things differently if someone was sitting in that chair and their life depended on it?”
Learn more about Novartis’ commitment to patients here.