Inside Pfizer’s Global Effort to Support UN SDG #3
Photo: Pfizer
- SDG 3 drives Pfizer’s business and societal mission.
- Creative partnerships support progress toward health and well-being targets.
- Quality healthcare access is essential to a more just, equitable world.
Global Goal 3: Central to Pfizer’s Mission
For Pfizer, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3: Good Health and Well-Being is more than just a target that aligns with our company’s core values. Rather, we view achieving this goal as critical to our mission. For more than 160 years, Pfizer has been making significant and far-reaching global health contributions, reaching millions of individuals each year. Fundamental to our approach in supporting global health is the understanding that our business and societal mission is the same: we discover, develop and bring to market life-saving medicines and vaccines that improve people’s lives while helping to ensure individuals have access to them.
To help drive progress toward SDG 3, we combine traditional philanthropic approaches with creative commercial strategies — such as market access partnerships, localized support and tiered pricing— that make it easier for underserved patients and communities to access our products. One example includes a novel collaboration with the American Cancer Society, the Clinton Health Access Initiative and Cipla that increases access to critical cancer medications, including chemotherapies, through competitive pricing strategies in six African countries, thus improving the quality of available oncology treatments. This tailored approach represents a natural evolution of Pfizer’s corporate responsibility strategy, supplementing more traditional philanthropic activities such as cash and product donations.
Partnerships are Key to Achieving SDG 3
Creative partnerships are essential for Pfizer to help make an impact in global public health — and to achieving SDG 3. We work to identify individuals and organizations who have innovative solutions to solving some of the most pressing global health issues, and then determine how Pfizer can most effectively contribute the resources and tools needed to overcome these challenges. Our partnerships range in size and scope, and involve a variety of stakeholders, including international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governments, community healthcare workers and entrepreneurs. An example of this is our work involving trachoma, a neglected tropical disease and the world’s leading infectious cause of blindness. With more than 100 partners, from small non-profits to large multilateral organizations, we are working to eliminate this disease, extending our donation program through 2025, which provides an antibiotic used to help treat and prevent trachoma to the communities that need it most.
By focusing on the specific needs of a community and partnering to provide the tools necessary to scale solutions, we are able to reach even the most vulnerable and remote populations with holistic health strategies and products that can have a profound impact. Our Global Health Innovation Grants program provides funding for entrepreneurs and social enterprises that are improving health on a local level. The grants allow these smaller organizations to take their high impact innovations to the next level, increasing access to quality healthcare in underserved communities. Pfizer is also supporting a program being implemented by four partners in five African countries that provides family planning access and education for women and men at the same time their children are routinely vaccinated, increasing the efficiency of clinic visits. We recently announced a second round of funding for these innovative programs.
Ensuring Good Health and Well-Being for All
As a global pharmaceutical company, we believe we have a responsibility to not only improve health worldwide, but to set the standard for effectively incorporating the SDGs into our business strategy. SDG 3 provides a roadmap for Pfizer and our partners to increase access to quality healthcare around the world, increasing the opportunity for all people to lead longer, healthier, and more productive lives.
Visit www.Pfizer.com/IndividualVoices to learn more about how Pfizer is supporting progress toward the Global Goals.
