More than two years after Merck & Co. spun Organon into an independent enterprise — and one of the only pharmas with a focus on women’s health — it’s buckled down on improving access to a ready-made portfolio while meeting unmet needs in the space. The “why” of this mission is easy to answer — scores of women’s health conditions have long been neglected by pharma R&D. It’s the “how” that’s been tougher to sort out. But using sustainable financing models, Organon has found a way.
“Obviously, we want to offer a very broad portfolio of solutions to tackle unmet need for women's health. But it's really about the ‘how,’” said Rafael Chaves, executive director of global corporate affairs, sustainability and ESG for Organon. “We are at the edge of innovation and really taking the lead on how to use sustainable financing mechanisms for the benefit of women around the world.”
“For a lot of these investors, investing in the healthcare space, and particularly women's health, is also a way to guarantee that their investments will be sustainable in time.”
Rafael Chaves
Executive director of global corporate affairs, sustainability and ESG, Organon
Chaves said Organon’s sustainable financing methods are already helping the company advance its goal to reach and impact 130 million women between now and 2030, both with its existing products and in R&D. It’s working with governments, banks and NGOs on programs that help women improve their health literacy, access contraceptives, and leverage existing healthcare provider resources in the communities where they live.
The company is also courting investors looking for impact-investing opportunities, which has skyrocketed in recent years, especially since the advent of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, Chaves said. Although interest has been high in environmental investing, the social space is just now getting more attention.
“Here's where we come in: Connecting the big players and saying, you have a chance to not only drive impact in green and blue spaces, but also in ‘pink’ spaces, in places where you could really show impact, not only from a healthcare outcomes perspective, but also from an economic perspective,” he said.
Organon’s pitch is backed by studies showing that women’s reproductive health is linked to increased economic growth, stronger workforce participation, and even higher gross domestic product, which is good for long-term prosperity.
“For a lot of these investors, investing in the healthcare space, and particularly women's health, is also a way to guarantee that their investments will be sustainable in time,” Chaves said.
A need for creative financing
Organon’s portfolio consists of medicines and biosimilars for a range of conditions including endometriosis, breast cancer and menopause. According to the company, its established brands produce strong cash flows — $4.5 billion of revenue in 2020, Merck said when announcing the company’s strategy — which support further R&D. But elsewhere, investment in women’s health has run hot and cold over the years. For instance, Bayer said earlier this year that it was shifting its clinical focus away from women’s health. In addition, the pandemic has funneled government resources to other areas of need.
“Governments around the world … had a very different set of priorities,” Chaves said. “Some other areas that are very important for social development and economic growth, such as, for example, women’s health, have been left behind.”
That’s why the world needs more creative financing solutions to ensure that women’s health stays a top priority, Chaves said, including results-based financing, which are health-focused social impact investments driven by outcomes.
“Traditional ways to … finance health won't be enough to actually generate the impact that we want,” Chaves said. “By acknowledging that … we're opening conversations with other stakeholders, mostly financial stakeholders, and we are bringing them into the conversation, offering them [opportunities] to actually invest, but invest smartly, based on results.”
For Chaves, it’s about the results.
“We are advocating outcomes-based financing,” he said. “We are in the position to actually drive, with other partners, interventions that will guarantee results, especially in the realm of unintended pregnancies and maternal mortality.”
Showing impact
Investors want to see the tangible results. In environmental sustainability, for example, they measure outcomes like decreasing water waste or greenhouse emissions to see if their investments are effecting change.
Women’s health investing is no different. For example, one of the key women’s health outcomes Organon is targeting is unintended pregnancies, which account for nearly half of all pregnancies around the world, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), who called it a “global crisis.”Organon and others are aiming to drive that number down. “Unintended pregnancies are strictly connected to the opportunity of a woman to contribute to society,” he said. “They are strictly connected to social development, they are connected to children's development.”
Chaves said Organon worked with the UNFPA to develop a set of proxy indicators to help understand if the company’s work around the world is helping to reduce unintended pregnancies. “When you're able to actually show that you will hit a certain number of indicators, you automatically de-risk that investment and make the decision making easier,” Chaves said.
Organon already has projects in various phases in Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Thailand, Kenya and South Africa where they are applying this approach. A great example is in Thailand, where Organon partnered with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation on the Smart Families project.
“There, we are actually driving a project with the government of Thailand to increase access and make sure that women have the choice to select when and how they want to get pregnant, if they want to get pregnant at all,” Chaves said. “The government of Thailand just declared that they will open … free access to contraceptives, and that's a direct result of the work we have been doing.”
Chaves said Organon’s focus on using sustainable financing mechanisms to advance women’s health “is creating a very real competitive advantage for our company.” But he hopes other companies will follow their lead and is encouraged when they do.“We know that if we are trailblazing, if we are just [by] ourselves at the top of the sphere, we won’t be able to carry the full weight of innovative financing,” he said.
