April 2011 Archives

GSK was recently recognized in the Newsweek 2010 'Green Ranking' as fifth among the greenest companies in the world. 

Our efforts towards sustainability and ultimate reduction of the GSK footprint to be carbon-neutral (the goal for 2050) include a wide variety of goals and initiatives. Initiatives include among many others the York, PA solar rooftop array and the recently announced plans to build a green home office at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia.

In 2010, we met our targets for 5% reduction in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.  We also achieved Carbon Trust Standard Global certification, the first company to achieve this recognition of global excellence in carbon management.

In the future, our goals are to reduce our carbon footprint 10% by 2015, and derive 50% of our packaging from sustainable source by 2015 and 90% by 2020.

For more specifics on GSK's plan to continue to be among the top ranking green companies worldwide, see the 2010 Corporate Responsibility Report  or the Sustainability Awards site.

Merle L. Diamond, MD, is President and Managing Director of the Diamond Headache Clinic

I'm excited to be working with the National Headache Foundation (NHF) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to help close the gap in doctor-patient migraine communication!

The NHF and GSK recently sponsored a survey that was funded by GSK to assess patient and physician dialogue as it related to migraine management. The survey revealed a gap in communication between patients and their physicians. As physicians, we most often base our treatment guidance on the information provided to us by our patients, making in-office conversations an important part of the migraine management process.

The survey found that while patients and physicians are having conversations about migraine management, patients may not always recall key pieces of information from these conversations and/or physicians may be misinterpreting the emphasis or time devoted to a particular topic - bottom line, physicians and patients differ in what they say is being most frequently discussed. One reason for the communication gap may be that migraines are often addressed as part of a larger health discussion instead of as a point of focus. According to the survey, patients saw their primary migraine healthcare provider an average of six times in the past year, but 70 percent of these visits were related to other health conditions.

A possible obstacle to having effective patient-physician communication is that some patients struggle to recall or describe their migraine experiences and/or how their primary acute migraine medication worked, which can make discussing migraines with their physician more challenging. In fact, one-third of physicians (35%) said they find it difficult to evaluate how well their patients' primary acute prescription migraine medication works, primarily citing their patients' inability to accurately recall or describe their recent migraine attack (50%) or how well their primary migraine medication worked (70%) as reasons for this.

Resources like a migraine diary or symptom tracker may be very valuable in helping patients better track their migraine experiences, which may ultimately help them facilitate more informed discussions with their physician. I personally have found it helpful when my patients keep a migraine diary - and the survey showed that a majority of both physicians and patients agreed as well.

I encourage both patients and physicians to visit www.lowerthepain.com and www.headaches.org to download some resources that can help guide conversation and to get additional survey results.

Editorial and other support for the survey was provided by the National Headache Foundation, with funding, development and other support provided by GlaxoSmithKline. Dr. Merle L. Diamond was compensated by GlaxoSmithKline for her participation in this campaign.

Today GSK continues its journey to increase transparency and allow the public more insight into our company operations by publishing our U.S. research payments. I was the chief compliance representative on a cross-functional team for this project, and this represents--for me--the culmination of two years of effort.  It is one day in my career that I will look back on with pride. 

While our critics may discount our work, I think it's important to remember that this is a voluntary disclosure - no one is forcing us to publish this information. It would have been easier to wait until 2013 when the federal Sunshine Act provisions come into effect in the U.S. This legislation will require the pharmaceutical and device industries to collect information on payments to physicians and submit it to the government for potential posting from 2013 on. However, we've chosen to tackle the transparency issue head-on, assemble the data and put it in the public domain for all to see, and, perhaps more importantly, critique. We want public feedback, and visitors to our website can comment by calling the GSK Response Center.